Dead on the Level (4 page)

“I never forget a face,” Ernie chimed in. “I’d know this guy anywhere.”

Slow and easy. One step forward, then another. Those beautiful, wide revolving doors weren’t so very far away. Keep it slow and easy.

“Hey, mister!”

Casey froze. He knew the words were for him, just as he knew who was calling. He could run for it—he had a head start, but even as the thought crossed his mind a huge, uniformed policeman came through the doors and started swapping talk with one of the bellboys. Casey just stood there and then slowly turned to meet the bartender face to face.

“You were going off without your suitcase,” Ernie said.

“Oh—thanks,” Casey muttered. “Thanks a lot.”

It was cold and dismal outside with an icy drizzle where the sun should have been, but Casey wouldn’t have objected to a blizzard. The important thing was that he was out, and he was free. A cab purred up to the loading-zone and he grabbed it. Where to? Not to Los Angeles, that was for sure.

“I. C. Station,” he said, and leaned back to breathe halfway easy for the first time since this nightmare began.

The feeling didn’t last. It was only a matter of minutes until the cab reached the station, but that was time enough to realize that he could never breathe easy again if he ducked out now. That was a strange thought for Casey Morrow, who liked doing things the easy way.

Casey Morrow? Why try to kid himself? There wasn’t any Casey Morrow. There was, or had been, Casimir Morokowski, a pinch-faced, hungry-eyed kid in tight serge knickers and long black stockings that were forever twisting about his spindly legs; Cas to his family and “Hey, you,” to the smelly crowd at Big John’s. For a time there had been a Master Sergeant Morrow, A.U.S., but he was dead. Nobody really came back from that kind of war. As for Casey Morrow, he was nothing but a fancy draped suit and a pair of custom built shoes with lifts; a busted dream on a far away Coast without even the remains to make a decent burial.

The cab slid up to the station and Casey went in, but he didn’t buy a ticket for any place. Instead, he sat down on a bench in the waiting-room and tried to think. But that wasn’t much good, either. He found himself watching for a man in a blue hat and a gray raincoat, because it had been too easy. Too damned easy. He smoked two or three cigarettes and then went over to the rows of steel lockers and checked his bag. For what he was going to try, it might be a good idea to keep mobile.

Maggie wasn’t in when Casey finally found the right place on Erie Street. Most of the buildings in the vicinity seemed to have been dropped from the same litter, and the only name he knew to look for was Maggie. Margaret, he assumed, but he was wrong. It was just plain Maggie, Maggie Doone, and nothing happened when he pressed the button under her name on the row of mailboxes. Maybe it was a fool idea, anyway. He stepped back out on the front landing and tried to make up his mind.

The whole idea was to catch Maggie before she read about the murder, especially before the later editions came out with the bartender’s story. The papers might not be so blunt as the bellhop had been, but a man who liked to hear himself talk as much as Ernie did certainly wouldn’t keep anything from the press. Sooner or later Maggie was going to learn about Phyllis Brunner’s drinking companion and, being a smart girl, she might start remembering things. A drunk with bloodstains on his sleeve, for instance. A drunk with Beverly Hills labels in his clothes. It was that bloodstain more than anything else that had brought Casey back to Erie Street. A woman who would go to the trouble of sponging off a stranger’s coat just might be inclined to listen to a story as farfetched as his. It was risky, but there were times when finding a listener could be the most important thing in life.

He saw her coming almost half a block away. She was hatless and wore a voluminous tweed coat that probably smelled of turpentine and tobacco; what was more important, she carried a bagful of groceries. A woman who had just dashed out to inform on a suspected murderer would hardly be sauntering calmly home with a load of groceries—Casey hoped. At the foot of the porch she spotted him.

“Don’t tell me,” she admonished with a frown, “let me guess. You forgot your handkerchief?”

“I have to talk to you,” Casey said. “It’s important.”

For a moment she seemed about to protest, but the darkness on Casey’s face argued her out of it.

“All right, talk.”

“Not here.”

“Now listen, chum, I’ve done my good deed!”

“Not here,” Casey repeated, and held open the door.

They went in through the entry and up the narrow stairway, a host of questions worrying Maggie’s forehead. Once inside the tiny studio Casey looked around. No newspaper, that much was good. And then he sighted the folded daily peeking out of the grocery bag.

“You’ve seen it,” he said.

“Seen what? What is it you want, anyway?”

With a woman like Maggie Doone you didn’t fool around. You either spoke your piece loud and clear or made tracks.

“That was blood on my coat, wasn’t it?” Casey demanded.

She didn’t say anything, just paled a little.

“Didn’t you think that was peculiar—blood on my coat?”

“No, not if you’d been in a fight.”

“And no mark on me?”

“I didn’t give you a physical examination! What are you driving at?”

Maggie made a dive for the paper, but it wasn’t time for that yet. “After you’ve heard me out you can have it,” Casey said, “not before. You’ve got to hear my story first. Just the way it happened.”

And that’s the way he gave it to her, every bit. He gave her the Cloud Room and his last two dollars on the table. He gave her the girl, the way she looked, the things she said, the crazy things she said. “So we went out together. At least, that’s what they tell me. My memory stops operating at that point.”

“Well,” Maggie acknowledged slowly, “I know men are getting scarce, but I didn’t know they were bringing dowries—”

She broke off talking and stared wide-eyed at the pile of greenbacks Casey was depositing on the kitchen table, and then her eyes began firing questions.

“I found it in the pocket of my raincoat a few minutes after I left here this morning,” Casey said. “It’s five thousand, all right. Just the way she called it.”

“I don’t understand,” Maggie murmured.

“That makes two of us.”

“But don’t you even know who she was?”

“I do—now.”

The paper could take it from there. Casey handed it over and looked about for that straight-backed chair. Finding it, he straddled it backward, folding his arms across the top of the back and resting his chin on his hands. He watched Maggie read what was spilled all over the front page, but her face didn’t tell him a thing. After a while she laid down the paper.

“You can call the police now,” Casey said, “or you can believe my version. I’m not so sure that I care too much one way or the other.”

“Phyllis Brunner,” Maggie murmured.

“I dream big, don’t I?”

“Does anybody else know about this?”

“A few. The bartender at the Cloud Room was giving my description to a very capable-looking police lieutenant when I checked out of the hotel about an hour ago. I’ve never been any too bright, but even I know what that means. By the time that description hits the newsstands this afternoon I’m going to be the hottest man in town. And I’m not bragging. Maybe there’s even a reward.”

“Don’t tempt me!” Maggie said crossly. She had gone very tense and pale, a condition Casey could appreciate. A man sought in connection with murder, maybe even two murders, wasn’t the accepted thing in house guests. But Maggie wasn’t screaming for help. Not yet, anyway. “What did you come back here for?” she suddenly demanded. “Why tell me all this?”

There wasn’t any answer Casey could make that would have sounded the least bit plausible. Maggie reached down and fingered the money as if to reassure herself that it, at least, was real.

“I’ve spent some of it,” Casey said.

“What if it was marked?”

“Marked?” Funny, but he’d never thought of that angle. He was too intent on running from himself, too scared of the bellboy’s theory which was, perhaps, originally his own, to think of such a thing. But if Phyllis Brunner had wanted to hang a frame on somebody, she couldn’t have found a more likely subject. Anyway, it seemed darned nice of Maggie to suggest it.

“At least I picked the right doorbell,” Casey said.

“Are you sure that you picked it?”

It was wonderful to watch what was happening to Maggie Doone. All that Casey could think of was a pointer poised for the kill.

“I’m beginning to doubt that you had anything to do with winding up on my doorstep. You were dumped, pal. Very deliberately dumped!”

Maggie wasn’t just talking. She’d crossed to the far side of the room, and now she came back pushing a large canvas before her. “I know of only one person who could have done that,” she added, and turned the canvas around. There wasn’t a doubt in the world. The painting was a portrait of Phyllis Brunner.

“I’LL TELL you everything I know about Phyllis Brunner,” Maggie said, “but it’s not any too much.”

There were two narrow couches in the studio. Maggie now squatted on one of them, tailor-fashion, and gazed reminiscently at the portrait.

“I didn’t know her as Phyllis Brunner. She called herself Paula Browning then—because of the suède handbag with the initials
P.B
. I suppose. I particularly remember that bag because it was worth at least eighty dollars, and Paula didn’t have a sou. All she had was a Schiaparelli ensemble, a pair of practice tights, and the most haunting eyes I’ve ever seen.”

“Like purple smoke,” Casey said.

Maggie brightened. “Exactly! I first saw Paula, Phyllis, I mean, going into Papa Danikoff’s studio next door. Papa teaches dancing. He’s formerly of the Imperial Russian Ballet, or so he claims. As nearly as I can calculate without an adding machine, the Czar’s troupe must have included all of White Russia and several Mongolian tribes. Anyway, Papa’s good and he’s cheap, and Paula was down to her last star sapphire.”

“That must have been tough.”

“It was. One day she pawned it and threw a party up in her room, which was, by the way, practically overhead. Everybody from Papa Danikoff’s was invited, and I went, too, so I wouldn’t have to listen to the ceiling bounce. It was grand. Spaghetti, pizzas, and plenty of red, red wine. Paula had a wonderful time. I couldn’t help thinking, as I watched her that night, that it must have been the first party the kid had ever given. Anyway, it was then that I decided to paint her.”

Maggie paused long enough to light a cigarette and study the painting for a while. It was a full-length portrait of a girl in black jersey tights posed against a practice bar. But mostly it was her face.

“She liked the idea,” Maggie said again. “But she wouldn’t accept a dime for posing.”

“Even with her last sapphire gone?”

“Even with. She was a good little model, too, most of the time. But she was an awful liar.”

Casey looked interested, and Maggie smiled.

“Of course, I didn’t actually know she was lying, not at first, anyway, but even Maggie Doone has her limits of gullibility. According to Paula, her mother had been a famous prima donna, the most beautiful woman in all of Europe—Hungarian, or something. I can’t remember all of the details. Her father, on the other hand, was the banished heir of some stuffy nobleman who frowned on his son’s Bohemian tendencies. Paula never came right out and claimed to be illegitimate, but I could see that the idea intrigued her.”

“At least she had an imagination,” Casey remarked.

“That’s only the beginning. The beautiful prima donna, it developed, had died shortly after Paula’s birth, and the grief-stricken father went from bad to worse. At present, he was supposed to be living in some Parisian hovel and using the last of his funds to give Paula a good education.”

“At Papa Danikoff’s?”

Maggie chuckled. “The story had holes in it a yard and a half wide, but I never challenged anything she told me. Somehow, I was always a little afraid that she might turn back into a nymph, or something, and just disappear. And in the end, that’s what she did. Disappeared, I mean.”

“Wait a minute,” Casey ordered. “Take that again.”

“She skipped. Vamoosed without notice. As you can see, the canvas isn’t finished. It was coming along fine, the best thing I’ve ever done in my none too humble opinion, and I was sore as hell when she ran out on me. I asked around the neighborhood, but none of the boys and girls had any more idea of where she had gone than where she had come from. One day she walked into our lopsided little world, played in it awhile, and then walked out again. One of Papa’s students did claim to have seen her getting into a black limousine half a block long. In tears, he said. That made conversation for a while, but most of us around here are too wrapped up in ourselves to lose much sleep worrying about anybody else. Of course, as I say, I nursed a slow burn about the painting.”

Casey could see why. “I like it,” he said, “unfinished or not. You really caught her.”

“Thank you, kind sir,” Maggie beamed. “A remark like that practically makes me your slave for life.”

It was difficult for Casey to keep on thinking what he wanted to think about Phyllis Brunner with her face staring at him from the canvas that way, a faraway something in her eyes and a vagrant smile loitering about her full lips. It brought back a haunting, dreamlike sensation that didn’t go with being cold sober. He looked away abruptly.

“And you never saw Paula Browning again?”

“Never. But one night a few weeks after this little escapade—which, by the way, couldn’t have been much more than a couple of months ago—I was thumbing through the evening paper when an item on the society page caught my eye—”

Maggie unwound her legs, left the couch, and crossed the room to where a highly cluttered desk was half hidden in the corner. After a few moments of apparently methodless searching, she came up with a much folded page of newsprint. “Among my souvenirs,” she said, and passed it over to Casey. Under a heading of
Betrothed
he read: