Kiss Your Elbow (2 page)

I
JUST STOOD THERE STARING
at her. She was flopped across her desk and had filed herself about as neatly as anything else in that rats' nest on her old-fashioned country editor-type filing spindle. I could see the heavy wrought-iron base of the spindle jutting out around the edges of her right breast. There wasn't much blood, which is probably the reason I didn't start heaving, because in the army I developed sort of a thing about blood.

Nellie alive and kicking is nobody's dream girl. She's a chiseler, an agent, a sharpie with a shady buck. She's fat and sloppy and although she undoubtedly owns another dress, I don't remember ever seeing her in any but this mottled grayish-green job which bitchy actors are apt to swear stopped being a dress years ago and now just grows on her like moss. But all the same, I was kind of fond of her.

I felt for her pulse, which wasn't—and that's all. I've done enough of those where-were-you-on-the-night-of bills in summer stock to know better than to start juggling bodies around now.

Lying open and almost hidden under one pudgy arm
and doing its bit toward helping her hair sop up the blood was Nellie's Youth and Beauty Book, which was, besides the phone and spindle, all of Nellie's office equipment. In it she kept all the names of actors and producers she knew, listed her appointments and stuffed it full of letters and bills. She must have had it refilled every year because it always had the same tooled leather cover.

Falling into the old first-act routine, I slid the book out from under her arm and looked at the page for today. As I figured, my name was down for an eleven o'clock appointment. There were three other entries ahead of mine. One I knew very well: Maggie Lanson. She was to be there at eleven, too. Nellie was supposed to have been at Chez Ernest, the chi-chi dress place at ten. The other name I couldn't recognize. There were just initials for the last name. It was Bobby LeB. and he had an appointment for ten-thirty. That was all for the morning, but in the afternoon she was to see Henry Frobisher at his office at three-thirty, and she had a dinner date with a little ingenue around town I knew, as who didn't, named Libby Drew.

Suddenly the phone rang. That was the cue for me to start blowing up in my scene and almost closed me before I opened. I had moved the corpus—at least the arm—when I pulled out the book, and I didn't want to get in any jam. My name was in that book and there was nobody around to knock some sense into me, and the damned phone kept ringing and ringing and I couldn't bring myself to answer it. Suddenly I got a load of a scene behind a gauze scrim I didn't want any part of—
me sweating under a lot of blinding lights with all the Irish character actors in town waving rubber hoses at me and shouting, “Who done it, Runch?” and me not being able to tell them. When I play that scene I want to have a few of the toppers.

Then the montage began. You know, lots of presses running and front pages flying at you like bats out of hell and banner heads screaming “Actor Slays Agent” and “Fiend Convicted.” If only the phone had stopped that ringing or I had stopped that nonsense of thinking I was playing the lead in some crappy whodunit at the Rialto and done what I should have done, everything would have been all right. At least for me. But no…Once a ham always a ham. So I picked up the Youth and Beauty Book and stuck it under my coat—still like in reel two—and copped a sneak.

The hall was empty. I had another brain wave and walked back up to the tenth floor and got on the elevator there and rode down. The only stop was the fifth floor where two polo coats got back on.

I did a walk-not-run out onto Forty-fourth and aimed west. I didn't want to pass Sardi's or Walgreen's again because by this time I had worked myself up to such a point that if somebody had said Boo! to me, I'd have waved aside the black mask and asked for that final cigarette.

I
WALKED UP
E
IGHTH
A
VENUE
for a couple of blocks trying to decide what to do. The Forty-second Street fleabags didn't seem to solve anything, though in all the books, ticket stubs seem to be wonderful alibis—except that the people that use them for alibis always seem to end up in the last chapter behind the eight ball. Which is where it looked like I was going to end up without costing me forty cents, either. Of course, I shouldn't have taken the Youth and Beauty Book.

And then I thought of Maggie Lanson. Even if her name hadn't been in the book for an eleven o'clock appointment, sooner or later I would have thought of Maggie Lanson. She is the only other person I know of in the world that feels the same way I do about most things. We are, as she is wont to say after a couple of slugs of pernod,
sympatique.

She's exactly my age, thirty-two, and was terribly pretty about ten years ago but the pernod hasn't helped that part of it much. She's quite rich, mostly from an early husband she divorced about seven years ago, and she tries to be an actress when she thinks of it. That was
how I first met her. We were in the same show, my one hit, for six months right after her divorce. I guess she felt she had to have something to do nights.

I don't know if I thought she would be able to tell me who had done Nellie in. Maybe she was early for her appointment or maybe she didn't keep it at all—which wouldn't be unusual. And if she did maybe she knew this Bobby LeB. She knew the most alarming collection of people. Anyway, Maggie was the only person in the world I wanted to see.

Her apartment, at the corner of Fifth Avenue and one of the Sixties, is on the fifth floor, and there is a buzzer system and a work-it-yourself elevator. I had a key because she didn't mind my dropping in if I was in the neighborhood—whether she was there or not—provided I called up first and emptied the ash trays when I left. I dialed her number in the corner drugstore (only in that section of town they are called “chemists” or “apothecaries”) before walking over, but there wasn't any answer so I went up to her apartment and let myself in.

It's a nice apartment if you don't mind stripes. Mostly gray and yellow stripes and lots of flowers. But the chairs are comfortable and the Capehart works and there's generally plenty to drink. A big living room with a practical fireplace, a foyer, bedroom and bath and a minute kitchenette in which ice cubes are the only thing she knows the recipe for. I poured myself a mahogany Scotch because by this time it was two minutes after twelve, which made it legal as far as I'm concerned. Then I sat down and started thinking about how soon
what had happened was going to hit me and what a jerk I was not to leave that damn book in Nellie's office and call the cops. I took out the Youth and Beauty Book. The blood had dried on its edges, and on the page that had been open were a few squiggles in an unpleasant shade of brown that had been painted with Nellie's own blood—her hair having been the paintbrush—when I pulled it out from under her.

 

It was a sort of hammering with a couple of low moans thrown in, all kind of muffled. It would go on for a minute, then stop for a few, then start again. At first I thought it was only that I should have watered my drink, but when it came the third time I knew it wasn't the Scotch and it wasn't me—it was in Maggie's bathroom. So I got brave by finishing off the Scotch and, making with a bookend, walked over to the bathroom door.

As I was in this far, I might as well shoot the works. I grabbed the bookend even tighter and started to open the bathroom door, only there wasn't any doorknob. It was lying on the floor right by the door. I picked it up and fit the square rod in the hole as quietly as I could, which wasn't very, since I was holding the bookend at the same time. Softly I turned it and threw open the door.

There was Maggie, nothing on but a nightgown, lying on the bathroom floor with her chin in one hand and languidly pounding on the pipes under the wash basin with a big empty mouthwash bottle in the other. She looked up from her pounding and after reeling in her eyes, she recognized me.

“Angel,” she said, “for God's sake bring me a drink.” She tossed the bottle in a corner where it shattered around a couple of times then lay still. I walked over to help her. My shoes crunched broken glass on the tile floor. “What happened to you?” I helped her to sit up. She yelped and, rolling over on one hip, looked at her behind. Blood was staining her sheer nightgown.

“Now isn't that maddening? A brand-new one, too. Well, don't just stand there, darling. Get me out of here.” I picked her up, carried her into the bedroom and deposited her gently, stomach down, on the bed. The cut wasn't very deep, but was bleeding quite a lot. I gave her a face towel to hold on it while I ransacked the medicine cabinet.

“It was that damned doorknob coming off. I've been trapped in there for hours. I broke a couple of bottles pounding on the pipes, but no one would come. If you're expecting to find bandages in that thing you're wasting your time…. There's nothing but sleeping pills.” She was right. “Call the superintendent. He's very sweet. I don't think it's worth quite all this fuss, though I'm glad you came in when you did. I was running out of bottles. What about that drink?” I came back to the bed.

“Maggie, how drunk are you?”

“I'm not drunk, Timmy. Honestly I'm not. Well, maybe a little hungover, but I was in there for over two hours, and I do think I should be allowed to be just a little testy, if I want.”

“Can you grapple with a horrid fact?”

“Couldn't it wait till I got bandaged up and had a real drink? It'll keep that long, won't it?”

“Yes. I think it'll keep that long.” I phoned the superintendent on the little house phone, and he promptly brought bandages, Mercurochrome and a screwdriver.

He was most apologetic and fixed the doorknob in a few minutes. He could have done it even quicker if he had kept his eyes on his work instead of Maggie, who was still on the bed covered with a blanket trying to negotiate, while lying on her stomach, the drink I had mixed for her. I finally got him out and left Maggie to fix the bandage by herself and started pacing back and forth in the living room.

The cut wasn't at all serious, but I was still a little queasy from it. Bleeding women, two in the same hour, were rapidly getting me down.

Maggie finally came out of the bedroom dressed in a blue housecoat with more stripes and brushing her hair.

“I know I'm stuck with that adhesive tape for the rest of my life. I used practically the whole roll.”

“At least you've got a cast-iron alibi.”

“Whatever should I want an alibi for?”

“Did you have any appointments this morning?”

The brush stopped in midair. “Oh my God, Nellie! I forgot all about it. She called yesterday and told me to come in this morning for a job. I'd better phone her.”

“You needn't bother. She's been murdered.”

“What a pity. Oh, well, I don't suppose I'd have gotten the job anyway.”

“Maggie, I said that Nellie's been murdered.”

“I heard you, dear. And about time, too, if you ask me.”

“What makes you say that?”

“But, angel…she's an
agent.”

“Maybe so, but sooner or later the police are going to want to know who killed her.”

“What are you getting in such a tizzy about? It isn't anybody we know, is it?”

“Maybe it is.”

“Oh, good. Who? Tell me.”

“I thought perhaps you'd know something about it. That's why I came here this morning.”

“Believe me, Timmy, I've got something better to do than go around murdering Nellie Brant. I think I will now have another drink. No, you stay here, I'll get them this time. Since I can't sit down, I might as well be busy.” She went into the foyer to the bar and brought us back a couple of straight Scotches. “Would you like to play Gin Rummy? We could do it on the mantelpiece.”

“No, I would not like to play Gin Rummy. Please, Maggie, I'm serious.”

“I'm sorry, Timmy. I do mean to listen but that affair with the bathroom has made me rather jumpy. I wish I could sit down.” She pulled some pillows from the couch and lined them up on the floor and lay on her stomach. “There, that's much better. Now tell me everything in one word.”

“Well, Nellie called me up this morning and…”

“What time was that?”

“About ten o'clock, I think.”

“And she was dead when you saw her, whenever it
was? As a matter of fact, I don't imagine she was dead at all. Probably drunk. She's a notorious nipper.”

“She was dead, all right. I took her pulse. She was still warm, but definitely dead.”

“Oh, but that doesn't mean a thing. I'm forever reading about people with no pulse at all carrying on like mad. I read about a chicken with his head chopped completely off, mind you, living to a ripe old age.”

I didn't like it one bit that my big moment did not turn out to be a big moment after all. And besides, I
knew
Nellie was dead. The picture of that body kept coming into focus in spite of the Scotch. I kept fighting it, trying to make it vague and blurry again, but it didn't work. I lay down on the floor beside Maggie and stared up at the ceiling.

“Here, lift up your head a minute.” I lifted up my head and she pushed a pillow under it. “Now lie back.” She stroked my forehead. Her hand was cool. It felt good. “Now then, tell me all. She called you at ten and then what happened?”

I told her exactly what had happened, or at least as near as I could remember. She thought it over for a moment.

“What about fingerprints? They're very smart this season.”

“I had my gloves on,” I said. I was rather pleased with myself not to be caught with that one.

“Pretty damned clever, aren't you, to…”

“Actually, I didn't really plan it that way,” I said. “It just happened.”

“…to be able to take a pulse with your gloves on.”
She finished on what I thought was an unnecessarily triumphant note.

And, of course, I must have taken my gloves off to feel for Nellie's pulse. I admitted that rather sheepishly.

“And did you put your gloves back on right after you picked up the Youth and Beauty Book?” I couldn't remember. “And did you close the door after you left?” Yes, I was positive of that. “Well, then, you have probably left a print large as life and twice as natural on the office door.” I tried desperately to remember if I had put my gloves back on or not.

“But what if I did,” I said defensively. “They won't necessarily know whose they are. I'm not in the rogues' gallery—yet.”

Maggie regarded me with what I can only describe as a pitying expression.

“Well, what's wrong now?”

“But you were in the army, weren't you? You can remember
that
much, can't you?” After four years of that production you're not liable to forget it in a hurry, and I told her so. “Remember that little card you had to carry about with you that had that repulsive picture of you on it…I could never understand why you didn't go to a really good photographer….”

“So what? I didn't leave my, what you describe as ‘repulsive,' portrait on the doorknob, did I?”

“You might just as well have. In case you don't recall, your fingerprints were on that card, too, with a copy probably crouching somewhere in a Washington filing
cabinet, with your repulsive portrait on the same page, waiting for just this moment.”

I got up and walked over to the window and looked down on Fifth Avenue. It was all crawling and busy and it wasn't raining and it wasn't snowing and it looked fine. Central Park was pleasant, too, even for February. It looked like I would like to keep on seeing it for quite a while yet, but the odds at the moment were less than even.

“Well, I suppose I ought to save the taxpayers some money and give myself up before they go to all that trouble and expense of spreading a dragnet to apprehend the fiend. A flock of New York's Finest are no doubt right this minute combing the Casbah from top to bottom.”

Maggie gingerly got to her feet somewhat like a camel, one end at a time. After several exploratory pokes, she evidently decided she could navigate under her own power and came over beside me at the window. The sunlight made her hair shine. I was going to miss that, too. She took my arm and very gently led me to the couch and pushed me down on it. She stood in front of me with arms folded and just looked at me. I resented being treated like an idiot.

“Now you listen to me for a minute,” she began. “You've been having one hell of a fine time working yourself up to a good second-act curtain and it's all a lot of nonsense.”

“That's all right for you to say. You're not wanted for murder.” I started to get up and she pushed me back down again. I considered swatting her.

“But that's the point,” she went on. “You didn't kill that old battle-axe, did you? Or did you?”