Gilded Canary (8 page)

It was dark in the place, particularly after the brightness of the outside, and at first Stymie was a dim figure in the murk.
“Yes?” came his voice, querulously.

Then, as Stephanie and Lockwood moved farther into the cluttered, dust-ridden chamber, the tone of the voice changed. It was
as if a great slathering of oil had been added to it. “Mr. Lockwood! What a pleasure!”

“Hello, Stymie.”

“So good to see you again,” the body dipped and scraped, unctuous and false. “And is this—whoever she is, Mr. Lockwood, she
is a most attractive credit to your immaculate standards of aesthetics!” The words were bad enough, but the faint whine that
accompanied them did the rest of the job. Lockwood felt his flesh begin to crawl.

He took in the shop, the jumbled furniture crammed against packing cases, paintings hanging crookedly from the walls and ceiling,
dust covering it all. His eyes came to rest in one area.

“Ah! Ever tasteful! You appreciate Stymie’s little collection of jade!” the fence said, every sentence sounding like a question,
as if any definite statement would commit him to joining the rest of the human race, a tribe Stymie avoided as much as he
could, knowing instinctively that somehow he would not fit in, could never belong.

“Very nice. What’s the price of this?” Lockwood inquired, lifting a small, dust-covered stone.

“Ah! Not for sale, not for sale!” Stymie’s body hunched in supplication. “No offense to you, Mr. Lockwood, no offense of course.
But these are—” his face was near now, and the foulness of his breath made the other two turn their heads. “Stymie’s little
playthings.”

“Actually, I’m not that interested in jade,” Hook said, taking out a pack of Camels. He offered them to Stymie and Stephanie,
and when they each declined, took one and flicked the Dunhill under it.

He blew out a cloud of smoke, as if to mask the decay that issued from each wheeze emanating from Stymie’s rotted mouth. “I’d
really like some jewels.”

Stymie’s eyes danced to and fro, in a Lindy of fear. “Jewels?”

“Right. Diamonds. A necklace. Earrings. A bracelet.”

“I may have something….”

“I’m looking for something special. Very special.”

“For the lady?” Stymie asked uncertainly, afraid of the answer.

“No,” Lockwood said. “For my company. Transatlantic.”

Stymie arched an eyebrow, a filthy finger fondling the thick moisture on his lips. He waited, uncertain and fearful.

“Muffy Dearborn is insured with our company.”

The finger froze.

“Dearborn,” Lockwood repeated.

“Ah yes, yes, Muffy Dearborn. I read about it,” Stymie gestured toward the back of his shop, at the stacks of yellowing paper.
“I find the papers in the streets. All right, maybe they’re a couple of days old, but if I didn’t know about it before, it’s
still news to me, right?” he cackled, and Lockwood and Stephanie instinctively backed away, unconsciously seeking to elude
the odors that might pour their way.

Stymie shuffled to the rear, then returned with a copy of the
Daily Mirror
. “I read this this morning. Both the story and Walter Winchell’s column. A pity that she pulled such a trick, just for the
publicity.” A feigned innocence crept into the bleakness that was his eye. “But why would you be looking for them here, when
obviously she must have secreted them someplace?”

Lockwood traced a line over his eyebrow and then over his cheek. A sickly white broke through the gray of Stymie’s face as
he paled. “I—I don’t understand,” he said. His hands had begun to tremble.

“Don’t try to con me, Stymie,” Lockwood urged, voice like ice. “You know I’m talking about Toomey.”

“Ah! Mr. Two-Scar!” Stymie grinned, stumps of yellow barely showing in the gloom. “How stupid of me to have misread your excellent
charade!”

“Don’t stall me. I know Two-Scar handled the Dearborn heist, and the word is out that you wound up with the rocks.”

“Me? Wound up with me? But why?” Stymie asked, his begrimed hands flung outward. “I’m simply a small businessman, doing what
he can to scrape by.”

“You’re beginning to annoy me, Stymie,” Lockwood said. “Come off the innocent kick. You haven’t been innocent since you traded
in your baby bottle for two sets of books.”

Stymie coughed out a laugh, choking the last of it with phlegm. “You have a marvelous sense of humor, Mr. Lockwood, marvelous.
He always has,” he added, directing this last to Stephanie.

“Spill it,” said Lockwood.

“There is nothing to spill,” Stymie said, triumph mixing uncertainly with fear in the sinkhole that was his face. “I don’t
know anything.”

Lockwood advanced on him. “Stymie—” he began.

“I mean it! Search the shop, I don’t care. I admire you, you’re a real gentleman, I don’t think you’d steal anything while
you looked!” Stymie made the final gesture. “If you feel you must—search me!”

The repugnance of this final offer stopped Lockwood, as he contemplated the ruin of clothing and mottled flesh that was Stymie
the Fence.

As Lockwood considered his next move, the battered bell in the shop began to jangle, and he turned to see the door open. A
man strode halfway in, then stopped as he took in Lockwood and Stephanie. There was something about him that seemed familiar
to Lockwood.

Now more accustomed to the dimness of the shop, the man looked from Lockwood, to Stephanie, and back. Only one of his eyes
was moving.

Lockwood started forward, but the man had already spun on his heel and was speeding through the doorway. He ran five steps
and slammed through the opened door of a black ‘38 Buick, the car screeching away before the door was even half-closed.

“Who is it?” Stephanie shouted, as she ran after Lockwood.

“One-Eye. The guy who put me in the hospital,” Hook answered, as he jumped into the Cord. “Stay here,” he said as she tried
to get in.

“No!” Stephanie cried, her eyes screaming defiance.

“Dammit, stay!”

“No!”

Lockwood swore, and shot away from the curb, with Stephanie beside him. No time to argue with her, no time to get her out
of the car, or he’d lose the Buick.

One-Eye was already two blocks ahead. The Hook slammed the car into second gear, and then third, pushing the Twin Six for
all it was worth, leaving a trail of burnt rubber behind.

He roared through a red light, narrowly missing an ice truck, weaving past two foolhardy pedestrians who were trying to cross
in the middle of the block, coming so close to one that the fender brushed him, whipping him halfway around.

“Look out!” Stephanie shouted, eyes never leaving the car ahead. “He has a gun!”

A shot whistled overhead, and Lockwood tightened his foot on the gas pedal. He was overtaking the Buick.

Another red light, and the Buick made it, but Lockwood had to jam on the brakes, wheeling wildly to his right to avoid the
Chrysler Airflow that sailed blithely by him. Then he wrenched the wheel to the left, as cars screamed to halts, horns blaring
angrily at him.

He was on 42nd again, and two cops were running, trying in vain to chase after the Buick. One trained his gun on the Cord
as Lockwood and Stephanie flashed by, but held his fire, vainly shouting out an order to stop.

Another shot roared near the Cord, and Lockwood glanced to his right. Stephanie was okay, her hair streaming rearward as the
car hurtled on.

“Better get down!” he yelled, but she paid him no heed, her concentration fully on the headlong flight of the car ahead.

Sirens began sounding behind them, a police car on their tail.

The Buick ran into a wall of cars, the light on 42nd now red, and wheeled south, weaving in and out of the traffic. A Ford,
thrown by the erratic darting of the large black car, went out of control and smashed into a Studebaker station wagon, the
side panels of the wagon sending out shrapnel of wood. Lockwood braked, then sped past them, as the cop car slammed to a halt,
cops scrambling out to assist the injured.

The Buick turned eastward up 37th Street, and The Hook followed, pouring it on. One-Eye swung back to them again, pistol leveled,
and this time there was a hint of desperation in his face.

From out of nowhere a handcart jabbed into the street, between the Cord and the Buick, a garment center clothes jockey shooting
out between two parked cars. Lockwood hit the brakes with all that he had and stopped two inches from the petrified laborer.

“Get back, get back,” Lockwood yelled, and the workman did so, in his agitated haste tumbling backward, as he forgot about
the sidewalk behind him.

The Cord plunged forward again. The Buick had gained valuable ground, but Lockwood knew the heavy beast was no match for his
car. It was only a matter of time.

They were down to Second Avenue now, and the Buick swerved north, probably heading for the Queensboro Bridge. The Hook followed,
and finally he was gaining, gaining, yards being scissored off by the second. One-Eye fired off another shot, and another,
cursing in frustration as each of them missed. Another sixty feet and The Hook would be on them.

Suddenly Stephanie stiffened, her body shooting upright, then rocking back and forth, pitching toward the door by her side
and then slamming at him, nearly tearing his hands from the wheel. Desperately, he tried to straighten the car out, but he
couldn’t see, Stephanie’s body lodged between him and the wheel, convulsing, twitching, deep guttural sounds wrenching out
of her. Lockwood jerked his foot from the gas pedal, then kicked aside her leg, once, twice, straining to reach the brakes.
Finally, he got a piece of them, and the car skidded to a halt. Stephanie slumped back toward her seat, and as he turned toward
her, Lockwood caught a last glimpse of the Buick, a tiny black dot on the horizon.

Stephanie was inert, and he reached for her, gently. “Stephanie!” He looked for bleeding, a bullet hole, but nothing showed.

There was no response from her, and he glanced desperately around. A crowd had formed, but was standing at a respectful distance.
He turned back to her. “Stephanie!” he said again, and this time she stirred.

He ran his hand over her face, sweeping back the strands of hair that had tangled themselves over her forehead. “Stephanie,”
he breathed, “what’s wrong?”

“What happened?” she asked.

“You tell me. I thought you’d been hit by a bullet, but—”

She waved a hand, weakly. “No. No bullet.”

“Then what?”

Stephanie shook her head, as if to clear it. She drooped back limply into the seat. Lockwood waited.

“Cigarette,” she said, and he pulled out two Camels, lighting hers, then his. “Let’s get away from here,” she said, exhaling
two trembling trails of smoke through her pinched nostrils.

“Okay.” He turned the key in the ignition, then slowly pulled away. The crowd they’d drawn dispersed in disappointment as
the anticipated drama faded into an anticlimax.

“Well?” he asked, after a few blocks had passed.

“I am so ashamed,” Stephanie told him. He glanced at her, but her face was turned away from him.

“About what?”

“I am not a whole woman.”

He looked at her, then back to the street, saying nothing.

“It began when—my first lover—André—the man like you… when he died.” She had already smoked the Camel halfway down. “I went
into—convulsions.”

She was looking at him now, fear on her face as he returned her gaze. “Epilepsy, they said it was, brought on by the shock.”

Lockwood turned left. “I’ll get you to a hospital,” he said.

“No, no, there is no need. Once it is over, it is over. Since that first time, for no reason, they will come… and then go.
I have no knowledge of it happening when it occurs, but when it is over, I feel disgraced. I have been told what happens—I
am like an animal, unreasoning, completely out of control.”

“That’s foolish,” he said.

“Undoubtedly. But that doesn’t change the way I feel. May I have another?” she asked, as she crushed the butt into the tray.

He gave her one and lit it for her. “I am ashamed of how you must regard me now,” she said, head averted.

An unpleasant thought crossed his mind, and he forced it away. “I think of you no differently.” He cupped her face with his
hand. “You’re a beautiful woman. And all woman.”

She nuzzled her cheek against his hand. “You are too kind.” She looked away again. “You said last night that it seemed to
have been a long time for me.” She looked back at him. “It was. Because of this—this condition, it was the first time—since
André.”

Lockwood looked at her with sympathy, and wished somehow he could trust her more.

Mr. Gray, head of claims at the Transatlantic Underwriters company, was unhappy. But then, in Bill Lockwood’s experience,
Mr. Gray was always unhappy.

“We pay you a lot of money, Bill,” Mr. Gray began.

“I know,” Hook answered.

“Certainly you’re a good man. We wouldn’t pay you a lot of money if you weren’t a good man.”

“I know,” Hook said again.

Gray stopped a moment, the frost in him forming, then subsiding. He didn’t like to be kidded. Couldn’t stand it. “But sometimes,
Bill—” Mr. Gray paused and stared out the window. He toyed with the pince-nez he affected, rubbing the gold rims, a habit
that over the years had become an annoyance to Lockwood. It was all the detective could do to keep from reaching out and closing
his fist over Gray’s hand to stop its nervous motion.

“Sometimes, Bill,” he repeated, “it seems to me that things could be done by you perhaps just a little more efficiently—more
quickly.”

“My kind of work takes time,” Hook parried, “you know that.”

“True. True. And yet—” Gray was wearing his old disappointed-in-you look. “When the insured is screaming for her money, and
the people over me are putting on the pressure, saying we have to move at top speed on this one—after all, her father and
our board chairman did attend Choate together—I would hope that perhaps this time you—”

“I’m moving on this as quickly as I can. If you prefer, you can replace me.”