Homicide at Yuletide (5 page)

“Don’t touch him,” the weary man said.

Hook turned and grabbed my coat lapels, his grin jutting, bloodstreaks in his dirty eyes. He pulled, and I lifted my knee, and he grunted, gasping, his big face bending to me, the grin wider. I pushed two fists into the grin, together, jumping a little, like a cheer leader asking for more noise. He went over sidewise, the homburg falling, straight yellow hair lank over the sides of his face, over his ears, cleaving a ragged part in the middle of his scalp. He didn’t go all the way. He lay out, raised from the floor on the heels of his shoes, one arm rigid behind him. For a moment I had the hysterical impression that he was going to break out into one of those Russian heel-dances. Then he started to move, over and on to his knees, and then up, the grin massive-wide now, a rotten black back-tooth showing, his lips puffy and pale. He came, staggering, chuckling in a cough, his right hand, a claw of flesh, stuck out in front of him.

“Don’t touch him,”
the weary man said.

“Don’t tell me what to do with this son of a bitch of a cutie. Don’t tell me.”

The scream and the rap of the gun came together, the scream seemingly louder. Then Hook was waving blood from his hand. The weary man sighed.

“He’s crazy,” Hook yelled, shaking the hand, splattering blood. “He’s off his cruller.”

“Let’s look,” I said.

He held it out to me, like the young lady modestly boasting about the size of her engagement ring. The bullet had gone through his hand.

“It’s not too bad,” I said. “Stop with the hollering.”

“Listen, mister,” Hook said. “Look out. That guy’s crazy. He’s nuts, I tell you.”

The weary man brought out a handkerchief. “Tie it for him, will you, fella?”

I tied the handkerchief bandage-flat across the palm. I used my handkerchief, rolled to loop, and tied that tight over his wrist.

“Crazy,” Hook said.

“All right,” I said. “What now?”

The weary man came off the corner of my couch. He was small and very slender in a long blue buttoned double-breasted coat. He wore a blue snap-brim felt hat square on his head without a slant. He looked like a scholar, deep lines on a thin white face, like a briefcase carrier out of a foreign embassy, except it was a gun he was carrying, not a briefcase, pointing it nowhere, hanging limp, a part of his hand. “It’s like I said before. Let’s do it nice, fella. Barney wants to see you. Let’s go, huh?”

We went. Hook drove the big limousine with one hand. The weary man and I sat in back. Snow drifted in a thick curtain.

We stopped in front of the Kitten House on Eighty-Ninth and we used the private elevator to the top floor. Hook held his hand behind him with a brave look of patient suffering like a shy hero after an act of rescue. “How’s it feel?” I asked.

He lifted a mild eyebrow. He was beginning to like it. “Nothing,” he said off-hand. “Numb.”

The elevator jerked open to a black carpeted foyer. A large man took our hats and coats and we stamped snow off our shoes. The large man was Potsy, a man I knew, ex-fighter, ex-entertainer, who had attached himself, early, to Barney.

“Hi, Pete.”

“Hi, Potsy.”

“Hi, fellers.”

The foyer led to an immense room, all black carpeted. A glittering chandelier shed a soft light. The walls were prison gray with black and white pictures. Furniture that would have cluttered three rooms was frugal in the lush vastness. A striped gold and gray draw curtain covered one wall. In front of that was a long black leather desk and a wide black leather swivel chair. Barney Bernandino was slumped down in the swivel chair, casual as a boy in a summer canoe waiting for the fish to bite. A tall drink in a monogrammed glass sat on a round gold coaster on the black desk.

“Glad you could come, Peter.”

“Nice of you to ask me, Barney.”

Gene Tiny was in a far corner of the room in a gold tufted easy chair, her pocketbook beside her, a drink in her hand, and her feet up, shoeless on a black hassock.

“Hello,” I said.

“I’m sorry I got you into this, Mr. Chambers.”

“Pete.”

“Sorry, Pete.”

“Why sorry?” Barney said. “It’ll probably earn him some money.”

He was small and delicate with a thin up-and-down face, gray at the temples and cleft at the chin. He had blue eyes with bags and a long slender nose that moved when he talked.

Hook said, “Look, boss.”

He unwrapped the handkerchief and flexed his palm. Blood started fresh.

“Hey, that’s bad,” Barney said.

Hook grinned happily. “Don’t make a Federal case out of it, boss.”

Barney turned his eyes to the weary man.

The weary man said, “Strictly lucky it’s only the hand.”

“Go down and see Doc,” Barney said. “Take him, Potsy.”

Potsy took him. Barney’s eyes remained on the weary man. The weary man said, “A gowster like that is undependable.”

“You’re supposed to stay on top of him.”

“I do, but it makes no difference. He sneaks away, and when he gets back, he’s got his veins full.”

“What happened now?”

“He pulled a wing-ding.”

“Where? How?”

“On this guy. Mr. Chambers. You got to get rid of him, boss. He’s geed up all the time. Plus he’s shooting his mouth off a little bit lately.”

Barney wiped his palms with his thin linen handkerchief and then concentrated on arranging it neatly in his breast pocket. “That monkey is getting to be trouble.”

“I won’t work with him no more, boss. Period.”

“Nobody’s going to work with him. Go down and tell Doc that’s what I said.”

“How’s Doc going to work it?”

“Tell him to check with me.”

“Right, boss.” The weary man cocked his head, nodded to Gene Tiny, straightened and nodded to me. He turned and his narrow back was absorbed in the gloom of the foyer. We heard the elevator come for him.

Barney sighed. “Good to see you, Pete.”

“You too, Barney.”

“How’s tricks?”

“Fair.”

“How’d you make out at Fred Thompson’s?”

“I don’t know what that means, Barney.”

“Gene Tiny says he’s dead.”

“Gene Tiny’s not exaggerating.”

“She says you told her.”

“That’s right.”

“So, after she called me on the telephone, we send a couple of guys down there to check. So what do you know? He’s dead. Just like that. And the joint looked like there was a terrific battle down there. You didn’t fight with him, did you?”

“No.”

“Know anything about it?”

“Me?”

“You.”

“Nothing.”

“Make yourself a drink, Pete. You look all stiff and aggravated.”

“Stiff, no. Aggravated, maybe.” I made a drink and brought it back to a soft chair. I winked at Gene Tiny and she smiled at me.

The phone rang, once and short. Barney picked it up, said, “Yes … yes … yes … any way you like, Doc.” He hung up, and wiped his hands again with the linen handkerchief. He looked at me and said, “Well? Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Have anything to do with it?”

“Of course not.”

“No,” he said. “It don’t figure. But what the hell? A thing like this, you try not to skip no angles. You didn’t see a package around, did you?”

“What kind of package?”

“Oh, I don’t know. A small package. Maybe like this.” He clenched his hands and put both fists together.

“No.”

Potsy came back and looked at Barney and Barney smiled at him and nodded pleasantly. Potsy came to me, took the drink out of my hand and put it aside. “Stand up, friend.”

“What for? Friend.”

“Routine, you know. Before, I got bollixed up with business. Now I ain’t busy no more. So stand up, friend.”

I stood up.

He went through all of my pockets and put the things on the desk. He disappeared and came back with whatever had been in my coat pockets. Barney fingered everything. He looked through my wallet, counted my money, even read through my little black book (which is not black, but blue, and contains more cooking recipes than phone numbers). He raised his eyes, lowered the corners of his mouth, sat back. I collected my junk and took my drink and went back to the chair.

“I apologize,” Barney said. “But what the hell? It’s like I said before. You got to cover the angles. I also apologize for your apartment, and your office, and for the change of address down at the Post Office. But I pay for it, kid. Don’t worry. I pay for all the damages.”

“Office?”

“Yeah, office.”

“And change of address?”

“Like this, kid. Maybe you found the package. Maybe you didn’t bring it to the office, and maybe you didn’t bring it to the apartment. Maybe you check it, you know. Then, like all the wise private eyes, you don’t want a check stub around with you. So you put it in an envelope and mail it to yourself. So we arrange the transfer of addresses at the Post Office, from your office and from your home—to here. Care of me. All your mail comes here for a week. And if you ever try to transfer it back, boy, that wouldn’t even be funny, believe me, it wouldn’t even be funny.”

“Barney, I—”

“One week. I pay all the damages. What are you worrying about? How much you tell him, Genie?”

“Not a thing.”

“You told him something.”

“I told him to go down there and tell Thompson what had happened to me. I told him who Thompson was. I told him to sit tight with him until I got out of jail.”

“What’d you need him for? What’s the matter with us?”

“Barney, you’re excited. He didn’t want any part of you, remember? He was afraid of you. I wasn’t even to tell you where he was, and you agreed to that. The deal was to go through me as intermediary. How could I call on you, in the circumstances?”

“All right, all right. What else did you tell our boy friend here?”

“Not one other blessed thing. Nothing about the deal, if that’s what you mean.”

“That’s what I mean. See, Pete? It don’t figure, but I got to cover all the angles. Okay?”

“It is not okay.”

“Well, that’s the way it’s going to be, whether it’s okay with you or not. Furthermore, if you’re clean, what’s the mad face for? What have you got to lose?”

“Nothing, except I don’t like it. I don’t like boss-man people and boss-man tactics, whether they’re little would-be dictators like you, or real big dictators running real bigtype international deals, like governments and things—”

“There he goes. Don’t never get this guy on a political kick, Genie-girl.”

“I just don’t like dictators. It’s part of my heritage. Heritage, you know what it means?”

“I don’t give a damn what it means. Now, shut up.”

“I don’t like that, either.”

“You want to hear something, peeper? I don’t give a good gahddamn what you like and what you don’t like, understand? If you get mixed up in a little inconvenience, I pay for that inconvenience, and I pays whatever you say, you just bill me. Now shut up with the dictators and the politics and be a good boy.” He stood up and leaned on the desk, rocking. “All right. You two can get out of here. I got a lot of thinking to do.” He looked at Gene Tiny. “How about his family, this Talbot? They know he was in town?”

“I don’t know, Barney. You know exactly what I know. He called me this morning, told me he was ready, told me where he was, and told me to go up to you and get it arranged. I did exactly that—and then I got tangled in that darn traffic thing.”

“Stop with those Martinis, sister, when you’re working, or, believe me, you’re not going to stay in business long. If you can’t take it, don’t drink—”

“You’re wrong, Barney. It wasn’t the Martinis at all. It was just one of those things.”

“Like what?”

“I was in a hurry and it was raining—”

“All right. Out. Out. And tell this guy what it’s all about, will you? Tell him the whole story. Maybe we’ll have him working on it yet. Who knows? And tip the cops too. What the hell? Out. I got thinking to do. Give them their things, Potsy.”

T
RAFFIC WAS STRICTLY
White Christmas. Gene Tiny and I sat in back of a cab that skidded, stalled, stopped, and lurched, while the windshield-wiper punctuated the muttered profane weepings of the driver. I didn’t care. I wasn’t in a hurry. I enjoyed banging against Gene Tiny. Furthermore, I had a story to hear.

“I know friends of yours,” I told her. “We’re going to the same party tonight, you and I. At the Somerset. Stella, Theresa, Gay, Noah, Evelyn Dru.”

“Charming,” she said. “Charming.”

“What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing, except a twenty-five thousand dollar fee that has just dropped out of existence. How would you feel?”

“Lousy.”

“I feel lousy.”

“I don’t blame you.”

She closed her eyes and leaned back. “That’s how it started. That’s how I got into this case. Those friends you just mentioned.”

“All right. So tell me. Maybe it’ll get your mind off the vanished twenty-five. Or maybe the twenty-five will start reappearing. Or maybe you’ll get human. Human, you must be something.”

She opened her eyes and smiled, but it froze.

“That’s how it started. Barney learned that I was a friend of the family’s. He hired me to find Sheldon Talbot.”

“Look,” I said. “Was he supposed to be dead? Or wasn’t he?”

“Blast, damn,” the cabbie said, as we slid into the side of a car. “How do you
like
these Christmas drivers? Wassail, that’s what it is. Wassail.”

“Wassail?” I said. “What is it?”

“Who the hell knows, if the lady will pardon me. But believe me, bub, it happens every Christmas.”

I slid shut the window between the driver and his passengers, and gave myself to Gene Tiny, exclusively. “Please,” I said, “proceed.”

“First,” she said, “about Barney. It was one of the few legitimate deals he was ever in.”

“Which deal? This one with Talbot?”

“No. A prior deal with Talbot. Seems it blew up right in his face.”

“Hooray for the deal.”

“About Sheldon Talbot. A guy with a fortune out of an invention. Evelyn Dru, his third wife, is a friend of mine. We worked out of the same modeling agency. I got to know them all. The hot Stella, the mother Theresa, and that other one, a bitch, Gay Cochrane. By the way, that marriage won’t last long.”

“Why?”

“I hear the guy’s running out of dough.”

“Who cares? So?”

“Talbot was a gambler. One of those compulsion things. He retired with a fortune, but he was dribbling it away at the Kitten House, with Barney as the affable host. It didn’t take too long, maybe three years, and he was milked to the bone.”

“Broke?”

“Correct. But Barney liked the guy, and sort of took him in hand. Nobody knew it, but the professor didn’t have a sou. Barney adopted him.”

“Why?”

“Class. Even a hoodlum likes class. A professor in the Syndicate, it gave it class. Plus there are times a racket-gentleman needs a smooth front that is not a lawyer. He ran important errands here and there, and he was worth his keep. Barney maintained him in style. And it didn’t do Talbot any harm. Working from the inside was better than working with a psychiatrist. He got cured of the gambling.”

“A fine time to get cured. When you’re broke.”

“Keeps you from betting broker.”

“So?”

“Remember Prince Krapoutsky?”

“Who?”

“Krapoutsky.”

“Yes, I think I do. The guy that took that powder when the government people practically had him salted away. Skipped bail on a lovely transatlantic steamer?”

“And wound up getting shot in a commotion in France. That was Prince Krapoutsky, man of all political leanings, fascist, communist, democrat, royalist, republican—whichever way the wind blew fairest—international leech. A meatball. But about three years ago, he was Prince Krapoutsky, living here quietly, supposedly a reputable citizen. The government had begun, however, to accumulate facts on some kind of espionage charge. Krapoutsky, somehow, was tipped, and he began making arrangements for a fast get-out. What do you need most for a fast get-out?”

“Cash.”

“You’re smart. Krapoutsky was short of cash, the kind of cash he needed. His mad money lay in a small stock of jewelry, you know, the family jools. Really fabulous pieces, though, dating all the way back to the Renaissance, that kind of stuff. Krappie had to act. If he’d have put the stuff up for public sale, there’d have been a hullabaloo. The government might have moved right in on him, figuring he was preparing for a monumental lam. They wouldn’t have taken their time, as they did, building a case.”

“So?”

“It’s complicated. You’ve got to listen.”

“I’m listening.”

“If he tried a private sale, even at a loss, which he expected to take in his emergency, there still might be a leak, and he couldn’t risk that. So he went to Barney, whom he knew through the Kitten House. Krappie knew he’d take a trimming with Barney, but at least he’d get the cash, and he could depend upon Barney’s silence and discretion—and he needed both of those, as much as he needed the cash.”

“So?”

“Barney is a wise, wise operator. That stuff is worth, oh, easily more than three quarters of a million. Barney bought it for two hundred thousand, cash on the line, but Barney is very wise.”

“How?”

“He had the sale consummated through Sheldon Talbot. Proper itemized bill of sale running to Talbot. What could be sweeter? A legitimate owner sells to a legitimate buyer, and there can be a quick and righteous turnover in legitimate circles. No behind-the-fence games. There’s no Barney Bernandino mixed in it, no underworld tinge, no possibility of a wrench getting thrown into a legitimate re-sale among top people. Good?”

“Beautiful.”

“The deal is closed, but the government has accelerated its case, and Krappie gets nabbed anyway. He puts up seventy-five thousand in bail, forfeits that, and blows aboard that Polish ship, I don’t remember its name. Word gets out about the sale, the government checks into it, but it was a legitimate transaction. There’s nothing wrong with Talbot having made a purchase from Prince Krapoutsky, especially, since, at the time, nobody knew that Krappie was building up for trouble with the government. Word gets out, and offers begin to come in.”

“I am commencing,” I said, “to obtain a thin drift.”

“This is three years ago, remember. Sol Trotto gets interested, Trotto, gem merchant de luxe. Trotto looks the pieces over, and wants the lot—at a half million. Barney trusts Talbot, but he always has two of his best boys with him, regardless. The transaction is arranged. Comes the day when Talbot is to go to Trotto’s office with his itemized bill of sale, all neat and notarized, and his lovely jools from the Renaissance.”

“I feel the punch line coming.”

“It’s coming, all right.”

“Don’t leave a word out.”

“Quiet. Where was I?”

“They’re going down to Trotto’s office.”

“In the cab, on the way down, Talbot has, we are told, a heart attack. ‘Hospital,’ he gasps. ‘Hospital.’ The boys get him over to a near-by hospital, fast. Bodyguard A goes out to call Barney. Bodyguard ? stays with Talbot in Emergency. ‘Bathroom,’ Talbot gasps before a doctor ever gets to him. He stumbles toward a corridor. Bodyguard B, solicitous, accompanies him. Sheldon Talbot breaks for a stairway, first knocking Bodyguard ? off balance with a very un-heart-attack-like lunge. Up the stairway he goes, and that’s the very last they see of Sheldon Talbot, Esquire, itemized bill of sale, jewels, and all.”

“Bully for the professor,” I said.

“The professor really pulled one. Planned and well regulated. He must have known which hospital they’d pass, and he must have gotten the lay of that hospital well in advance. He certainly pulled one—and look on whom.”

“You look. Then?”

“That was three years ago. Two years and eight months later, I’m hired, because Barney Bernandino learns that I’m a friend of the family’s—”

“Central Park South and Sixth,” the cabbie said, sliding the window behind him aside. “And I would also pay a small donation to whatever charity named,
not
to operate a common carrier upon Christmas Eve—I would be pleased to catch up with the chicken pox upon Christmas Eve—but if I take off, I have got a boss that is wiser than that there Barney Bernstein you are dreaming up, lady.”

I rendered my donation to the taxi driver, leavened with tip, smiled, muttered in sympathy, dutifully said, “White Christmas,” and took hold of Gene Tiny’s fur arm. I led her past my doorman, matching my White Christmas to his, took the elevator, and then there we were, in the maelstrom of my apartment.

“Murder,” she said. “What were they looking for?”

“Jools, I am certain—if that long story of yours develops as I expect it to develop.” I took her coat and hung it away with mine. “You want a drink first, or would you like to help me fix this joint up first?”

“Joint first.”

Fixing the joint was accomplished, on my part, in small spurts. Mostly, she fixed. I attended to the television set. I righted it and moved it back in place precisely cattycornered, but for the rest, I wasn’t of too much assistance, aside from proffering suggestions. Gene Tiny had removed her black jacket and dressed the back of a straightened chair with it. Facing me, each time she stooped, her off-the-shoulder blouse slid to much-more-off-the-shoulder, generating a non-furniture-fixing zest within me. When she stooped, not facing me, the whirl of seams running up the long long curve of calf and thigh added to the zest and detracted from the fixing. Thus the room acquired a unilateral semblance of order, although I did help with some of the heavy pieces.

“Whew,” she said. “I’d like to wash and freshen the makeup. Where?”

She took her bag, and I showed her where. “You wash and freshen,” I said. “I’ll make drinks. Martini, is it?”

“Scotch for now, if you please.”

I brought out a bottle, brought water, soda, ice cubes, and glasses. She came back, sighed, sat, and crossed her legs. She took a cigarette from the bag beside her. I lit up and made her a drink, a large one. I made one for myself and sat opposite her, a vantage point. This Gene Tiny was extraordinarily something, and here it was Christmas Eve, and here we were alone in my apartment, close and comfy, with snow piled up on all the window sills and the park all white and the room quiet and peaceful and a non-furniture-fixing zest bubbling inside of me—so we had to be mixed up in a deal featuring a dead man with a wine-red beard, and jewels, and an unromantic jolt of disappointment involving the loss of a fee of twenty-five thousand clams.

“For the time being,” I said, “I’ll skip my wash and freshen. Let’s get that story over with.”

She sipped her drink, put it down beside her.

“Sheldon Talbot disappeared.”

“I heard,” I said.

“I didn’t know Barney at the time. There was gossip among us, his friends, that he’d run off with somebody, I mean Talbot. It sort of dwindled away. Then came that terrible news from Chicago. Theresa went out there and had the pieces put together and he was buried. The address on the papers that were found on him showed a bare furnished room, nothing else. That was that.”

“But it wasn’t.”

“Right. It wasn’t. About four months ago, I received a call from Barney Bernandino. I went up there and he told me the whole story.”

“About Talbot.”

“About Talbot and Krapoutsky and the jewels from the Renaissance and the bodyguards and the hospital—”

“The works.”

“It was Barney’s idea that a man with a million dollars’ worth of jewelry, more or less—that a man like that doesn’t get killed without leaving something—a trace. Barney said that for two and a half years he had had people out looking for Talbot, and that Talbot damn well knew that.”

“So Barney thought it was a plant.”

“That’s right. It was Barney’s idea that Talbot had devised a plan to get out from under, that it wasn’t Talbot who was dead, but that it was somebody that Talbot had arranged to be dead for him, to take the heat off him. The truck had been found without a driver, the alleged Talbot under the wheels. There had been an investigation and it had been found that the truck had been stolen out of a garage. I honestly thought Barney was crazy.”

“But—”

“I wasn’t there to think for Barney. He wanted me to go out to Chicago, at twenty-five dollars a day and expenses, to check and see what I could do. What recommended me to Barney was that I had actually known Talbot.”

“So?”

“I went.”

“So?”

“So, after a while, I began to agree with Barney. I came to the conclusion that, in his field, Barney was a very brilliant man.”

“Everybody does, sooner or later.”

“I spent two months in Chicago.”

“Not bad at twenty-five a day.”

“No, I worked. I didn’t find Talbot, but I did accumulate facts that certainly were peculiar. The man who was killed was approximately the same size and build as Talbot. That’s all. The place of residence had been an absolutely bare room, not even a suitcase. There had been no clothes, no writings, nothing. More and more, I inclined toward Barney’s theory. I kept an ad running in the personal columns of all the Chicago papers, but it didn’t help.”

“What was the actual identification of the man under the truck?”

“Sheldon Talbot’s personal papers. A few old trinkets. Stuff, unimportant stuff in his wallet. And a finger ring positively identified as Talbot’s by Theresa.”

“So?”

“I came back to town, conferred with Barney, and then I really had an idea. I told it to Barney and Barney liked it. I did make Barney promise that if we ever turned him up, there’d be no rough stuff, no violence, or I’d scream my head off to the police. Barney promised.”

“Idea?” I mumbled.

“Talbot was a New Yorker who, barring vacations, had lived here all his life. He probably never read a Chicago paper. You know how it is, we’re all alike, provincialism, something—most of us stick to our home-town papers. Whatever, it worked. I ran an add in all the New York papers. It read: ‘Talbot. It’s all right with Barney. An amicable agreement can be worked out. Contact me and trust me. Gene Tiny.’ Three weeks later, I got a call, and I went back to Chicago.”