Masters of Noir: Volume Two (13 page)
"Is it for a lot of money?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “Not much, or I couldn't pay the premium on it. But it's a lot for guys like you and me. Two grand."
"What makes you think she's going to die today?” I asked.
He was pretty drunk. He winked at me. “I'm a doctor,” he said. “I know. I know the signs.” Then he kind of bit his lips with his wine-stained teeth and said, “There's a friend of mine with the city relief agency. He always tips me off when investigators are coming around. They'd cut me off the relief rolls if they knew I had Marge up there with me. You're not allowed to keep another person in the place they rent for you. Up to now I've always got her out in time when the investigator was paying me a call. Parked her in a gin mill and hid what rags she's got and got rid of all the empties. But now she's going blind and almost paralyzed, I can't get her down the steps. And I've been tipped off the investigator is coming around tomorrow. I can't lose that relief.” He drew himself up straight, said, “I'm too much of a gentleman to brace men on the street for my flop and booze money."
The blockbusters he'd bought had really busted inside me now and made me kind of cocky. Besides, it made me sore, him throwing off like that on guys who brace marks on the street. After all, he was just another wino himself. I should have strung him along, of course, since he was buying and I was needing. But I said, “Look here, Doc, you trying to tell me you're going to bump this old doll today so you can collect her insurance money and this investigator won't find her in your pad?"
"That's fantastic,” he replied. “I couldn't harm a hair of her poor old head. Why, I'm the one who's kept her alive as long as this. But I'm a doctor and I know she's dying, and since she's dying I might as well see the undertaker gets her out before the relief investigator arrives."
He looked me full in the face. “That's only common sense,” he said. “And I'll give her a nice funeral on the insurance money, too."
I was still talking against my own best interests, my best interests being for him to keep hanging around and buying me blockbusters. But I was getting tight and I said, “If you think she's dying why aren't you up there with her?"
He said, very serious, “You've got a point. A telling point. Fact is, I don't want to be alone with her when she dies, Jack. I'm a drunk. I might get the horrors. You could do me a favor, Jack."
Uh-uh, I thought, here it comes. I'm old enough to know guys don't buy you three blockbusters in a row without expecting something. Usually with guys like me who are big and young and kind of rough, it's the fags slumming on Skid Row who make the propositions. Sometimes they only want you to come up to their fancy Park Avenue apartments and beat the holy hell out of them. That's a funny kind of kick, you ask me. But this guy wasn't gay and he wasn't any slummer. He was a wino who belonged right where he was—on the Bowery.
He was saying, “I'd appreciate it a lot if you'd come up with me, Jack. We can pick up some bottles of wine on the way. Enough to last all day. I'd like you to be there when she dies, just so I could have a little company. A man needs a friend at a time like that."
It's funny the things an alky will do to get the stuff. I knew damned well he was framing me somehow and I thought he might be planning murder, but all I was thinking about was those bottles of wine he was going to buy.
I said, “Well, maybe if I could have another blockbuster first. It's quite a walk."
"Sure,” said the doc. “Put two ryes in my friend's sherry this time, bartender."
The Bowery is used to sights, but the procession we made on our way to Hester Street was one that attracted attention. The blind old dog could hardly walk at all and he moved along in his zombie fashion putting one stiff leg out in front of the other, his nose scraping the sidewalk like a bloodhound on the scent. The hangover and four blockbusters, including a double, had made my own legs wobbly. And the doc was glaze-eyed drunk and stared straight ahead like he was hypnotized. We stopped at a liquor store and bought half a gallon jug of wine plus an extra fifth, just in case the old lady didn't die right away and we might need it. There were several flights of steps to climb in doc's tenement, but we didn't mind ‘em too much because we stopped on each landing and had ourselves a snort. I carried the jugs and the doc carried the blind and crippled old dog upstairs.
The doc's flat was a railroad, three tiny rooms in a row. The first one was the kitchen with an oil stove and a sink and an old fashioned ice box and a table and some chairs in it. The second was the doc's bedroom. The door to the third was closed. The place was pretty bare and was furnished with stuff from junk shops, but the doc had kept it neat and clean. I guess it was his hospital training. Most drunks like doc are pretty messy.
The doc told me to sit down in the kitchen. He left the jug and the dog with me. Then he tiptoed to the old lady's room, the closed one, and opened the door. He came back in a minute or two. He put a finger to his mouth and said, “She's asleep now.” But he didn't close her door.
We sat in the kitchen drinking wine and talking about this and that and once or twice I nodded off and put my arms on the kitchen table and slept maybe an hour or more. Every time I woke up the doc was there. He was one of those winos that seems to drink himself sober. Each time he'd tell me the old doll was still sleeping. The old dog would be sleeping, too, snoring loud.
Once I woke up and saw there was hardly a drink left in the half-gallon jug and that we'd have to start on the fifth if the old lady didn't die pretty soon. I figured the vino wasn't lasting as long as the doc had thought it would till I looked out the window and saw it was dark. We'd got to the flat before noon. Now it was night already. A drunk sure loses track of time, sleeping and waking up like I'd been doing.
The doc looked worried. He said, “It's getting late and the investigator comes tomorrow. I've got to get old Marge out of here."
I was rumdumb and stary-eyed and the nasty part of sitting there and drinking and waiting for a sick old woman to die didn't mean a thing to me. I was only worried if the wine would last. I said, “You mean she's already dead and the undertaker hasn't come to get her?"
He shook his head. “No,” he said. “She hasn't died. Not yet, she hasn't."
Then he went over and shook the old blind dog named Pasteur and woke him up. He said sharply, “Come on, Pasteur. We're going to show old Marge the new trick that you've learned."
Like I say, I was rumdumb and stary-eyed and my brain was numb from the blockbusters and the Pete and I just sat there grinning like a halfwit, not realizing what the hell he was up to.
"Play dead, Pasteur! Play dead!” he said.
The poor old dog got down on his side and after a few painful tries he rolled over on his back and lay there with his stiff legs stuck up in the air and the milky cataracts over his eyes glowing in the ceiling light. The doc had told me all about the old doll identifying herself with the dog, but I was so drunk, I'd forgotten.
The doc had an old-fashioned battery radio in the kitchen in one of those dome-shaped stained-wood cabinets. He turned a dial. For a minute nothing happened. Then there was the most God-awful blast of shrieking sound I ever heard in all my life. I jumped half-way to the ceiling. He grinned at me, turned off the radio, said, “You're nervous, Jack. You need a drink. The radio always does that when you first turn it on. I wanted to show you how well-trained the dog is. He hasn't even twitched. You can't even see him breathing. An atom bomb could go off and he wouldn't move until I snap my fingers."
The old dog hadn't moved. He still looked about as dead as any dead thing I ever saw. But the sudden blast of noise had awakened the old woman. She was calling to him in a croaking voice. The doc said, “Come out here, Marge, and take a look at poor old Pasteur."
To my drunken eyes, Marge was a shapeless bundle in an old gray wrapper with a pale face and toothless mouth and clouded eyes and wild white hair. She looked like she must be about a hundred. She hobbled slowly toward the kitchen. She walked as stiff as the old dog.
Finally she saw the dog lying there and she let out a bloodcurdling scream, the most awful sound I ever heard. “He's dead!” she shrieked. “He's dead!"
The doc said nothing. He just sat there looking kind of interested, like one of those scientists who do things to white mice.
I couldn't say anything, either. I was too stupefied.
Marge's scream changed to a kind of gurgling in her throat. Her face started turning black, right there in front of my eyes, like she was choking to death. Then she crumpled to the floor, real slow, like one of those trick motion pictures you've seen.
I've lived rough and I've seen some things but that was the most horrible thing I ever saw. Between the booze and the shock I couldn't move. Not for several minutes. I just sat there with my mouth open, kind of gasping.
The doc kneeled down beside the old woman and felt her pulse. Then he went into his room and got a stethoscope and listened to her chest. Finally he got up, cool as you please, and said, “She's dead. The shock was too much, seeing the dog like that. I'll have to call a doctor to issue a death certificate. And then the undertaker."
He noticed the old dog, still stiff there on his back, and grinned. He snapped his fingers, said, “It's all right now, Pasteur. You did the trick just fine."
He said to me, “You're sober enough to know what you just saw. A perfectly natural death. An old woman with a heart ailment. She came out here and keeled over with a stroke, a heart attack."
The old dog finally scrambled to his feet. And I came to life, too. I swung one at the doc. I was so drunk and weak I couldn't have hurt a healthy fly, but it was a fluke punch and it landed right on the point of doc's chin, the button. He went down and his head banged hard. He lay there with his eyes staring up at me and they looked as sightless as the old dog's eyes.
It's hard to say why I swung at him. It wasn't feeling sorry for the old woman made me do it. In a way, her dying was what they call euthanasia, mercy killing. But when I was a kid back in Ohio I had a dog. It was a little fox terrier named Spot. I guess Spot was the only living thing I ever cared much about. I cried my eyes out when he died. I remember that, all right.
What I did next was pure instinct. I stuck the fifth of wine in my pocket. I figured I was going to need it. I'd seen the doc had bills left from his relief check when he paid for the liquor. He'd had them in an old wallet in the inside pocket of his coat. I bent down and got the wallet.
I guess the doc had a weak heart, too. Anyway, when I leaned down to get the wallet my hand was up against his chest. And his heart wasn't beating. I wonder who's going to get the old doll's insurance money. You can buy all the Sneaky Pete on the Bowery with two grand in your jeans.
I picked the old dog up in my arms. He was heavy, but I ran down four flights of steps with him. I brought the old dog here. He's right alongside me now. The dog and the bottle. I had to give the clerk downstairs $5.75 of the doc's money for this cubbyhole I'm in. Six bits for the room rent and five bucks bribe for letting me bring the dog up. I guess you could get a big room in the Waldorf-Astoria for that kind of money, but maybe they don't take dogs and winos.
I don't know what I'm going to do about the dog. Maybe I can give him to some home for dogs like the SPCA runs. I don't understand at all why I took the dog in the first place, any more than I understand why I hit the doc. Maybe it was because I remembered my own dog, Spot. Maybe it was because I was afraid the blind and helpless dog would starve to death if I left him up there in the room with two people who couldn't feed him.
Mostly, though, I think it's just that I want to try to make it up to the poor old dog for what the doc did to him. People like the doc and the old doll, Marge, and me don't count. We stumbled over something a long time ago and we took the wrong turn and landed on a street called Skid Row. The doc and the old doll are dead anyway. I'm still young and if it was only the booze with me, maybe I could join Alcoholics Anonymous or something and start all over again. But a city croaker told me some time back that this thing I got in my throat that keeps me from taking big swallows is going to kill me pretty soon, booze or no booze.
But the dog, he's different. All he ever wanted to do was please the doc and this old doll. He's old and crippled and blind and he's got sores on him and he hurts all over, but he kept right on trying to please the doc and the old doll by sitting up on his rump and doing tricks for them.
So I say it's not right what the doc did to the old dog.
He made the dog a murderer, that's what he did.
BUILD ANOTHER COFFIN by HAROLD Q. MASUR
He's crazy!” she said. “Stark, raving mad! How can they let such a man be a private detective? I never saw anybody act like him in all my life. Why, it's ridiculous! He simply hasn't got all his buttons. Do you know what he did, Mr. Jordan?"
"What did he do?"
"He made faces at me and told me to go home.” She expelled a short gasp of utter frustration.
"Please, Mrs. Denney,” I said, “try to relax."
"Relax?” Her voice went up a full octave. “How can I after talking to such a lunatic?"
What she needed was a shot of brandy to quiet her nerves. I reached behind me into the telephone table and got out the office bottle and poured. “Say when.” But she seemed to have lost her voice, or else she was very thirsty, because I had to quit pouring in order to save my good Napoleon brandy from slopping over the rim of the glass onto the lap of my gray tweed pants.
She drank it like water, with no perceptible effect. Her nostrils were still distended, her bosom continued to heave, and she couldn't find a comfortable spot in the red leather client's chair. She had walked unannounced into my office ten minutes before. Her name was Grace Denney and she was married, which seemed a bit unfair, since an architectural design like hers isn't constructed every day and ought not to be taken out of circulation, though I couldn't blame any man for wanting an exclusive on it.
She was tall, a lithe, sleek, supple item, slender at the hips, rising like an hourglass to emerge burstingly from the square-cut neckline of a simple dress, wondrously and sumptuously assembled. When you came to her face, reluctantly, you saw luminous brown eyes and cherry-red lips, full and shining. From Cleopatra on down, she had them all stopped. Whatever you might need, wherever you were, she had it, in spades. It made no difference, your age or your physical condition, here was a girl who could put spring in an old man's legs and fire in a young man's blood.
Emotional pressure had made her story a little disjointed. I had gathered only that she was from California, that she had written to a private detective named Lester Britt, asking him to find out why an aunt of hers never answered any letters, that she had arrived yesterday, paid a visit on Mr. Britt, and found his behavior most unorthodox, to say the least.
The brandy, I saw, was beginning to work. She settled back in the chair, breathing easier.
"That's better,” I said. “Now, Mrs. Denney, let's get the facts untangled. This aunt of yours, tell me about her."
She moistened her lips. “Aunt Paula. Mrs. Paula Larsen. She's a widow, about eighty, I'd say, maybe more. She lives at the Vandam Nursing Home on Long Island."
"Who supports her?"
"Supports her?” Grace Denney snorted politely. “Aunt Paula has annuities that pay her at least five hundred dollars a week. Her husband was my mother's brother. Oscar Larsen, the candy man. Larsen's Fine Chocolates. Stores all over the country. He put all his money into annuities before he retired. And shortly afterward he died."
"You say you haven't heard from your aunt?"
"Not since she entered that nursing home."
"How long ago?"
"About two years."
I looked at her curiously. “And you weren't concerned about it until recently?"
She hastened to defend herself. “Let me explain. I used to live with Aunt Paula, until I met Charles. Charles Denney, my husband.” She paused, waiting for me to comment. When I remained silent, she raised a delicate eyebrow. “You never heard of Charles Denney?"
"Should I have?"
"He'd probably think so. Charles was in pictures, until the movies found their tongue. After that he just couldn't seem to click. All they'd give him were minor roles, small bits where he didn't have to talk much. It was quite a blow to Charles. He still fancies himself as an actor and thinks that there is a great Hollywood conspiracy against him."
"Where did you meet him?"
"Here in New York. Aunt Paula didn't like him at all. She thought he was too old for me.” Grace Denney twisted her mouth wryly. “Which he was, of course, but I was too stubborn at the time. Aunt Paula was furious when I went to California with him. She swore she'd never talk to me until I was single again. I wrote once or twice, but she didn't answer, and then I heard indirectly that she had entered this Vandam Nursing home. About a month ago I started writing to her, with no results at all."
"Is that so surprising?” I asked. “You're not single again, are you?"
"No, but I'm going to be. I intend to sue Charles for divorce. I thought that would please Aunt Paula, and I was very surprised when she didn't answer my letters."
"So you hired a private detective, this Lester Britt."
"That's right."
"Why?"
"Because I was worried."
"About what?"
She shrugged vaguely, a troubled look in her eyes. “I can't say exactly. I really don't know. It's just something I feel. And now with this private detective acting so peculiar ... “ She let her voice dwindle uncertainly and caught her full bottom lips between her teeth.
"Who recommended you to this Lester Britt?"
"Nobody. I found his number in a Manhattan directory at the Telephone Exchange."
"What else did he say besides tell you to go home?"
"He said Aunt Paula never wanted to see me again, that she still hated me.” Grace Denney's mouth tightened. “I don't believe it."
"Why didn't you try to see her?"
"I did.” Bafflement squirmed in tiny wrinkles across her forehead. I went straight out to that Nursing Home on Long Island. The place is built like a fortress. I spoke to Dr. Albert Vandam, who runs the Home. He told me to wait in the office while he spoke to Aunt Paula. After a few minutes he came back, shrugging his shoulders. He said that she had developed an obsession. She absolutely refused to see me."
"All right,” I said. “I'm a lawyer. What do you want me to do?"
She looked surprised. “Whatever lawyers are supposed to do in such cases. If Aunt Paula has become senile, if she's incompetent to handle her own affairs, don't you think a guardian ought to be appointed?"
"No doubt about it,” I said. “Who's supposed to inherit her money?"
"I am. It was all arranged by Uncle Oscar when he set up the annuities."
I looked at her with fresh respect. For looks and personality she already headed the list. Now she rated high on the financial scale too. I smelled a generous fee in the air. Though I would have handled her case anyhow, for a smile and a smaller fee.
"You have just retained yourself a lawyer, Mrs. Denney,” I said and stood up. “Suppose we pay a visit on this Lester Britt and see what he has to say for himself."
She abandoned the chair with alacrity, a sudden smile warming her face. I got the full brunt of it and I could feel it all the way down to my shoes. “That's what I like,” she said, “a man of action."
We left the office together and she tucked her arm through mine with an easy familiarity, as if we had known each other a long time. She kept step with me across the lobby and I wasn't ashamed to be seen with her. I could feel her pulsing aliveness and the fluid grace of her body.
But not for long.
She gave a sudden start and I felt her stiffen at my side. Then she jerked free and her heels clicked a sharp tattoo on the sidewalk as she steered straight for a man holding up the side of the building. I followed.
"Are you spying on me, Charles?” she demanded acidly. Her eyes were hot and her voice was cold. “When did you come to New York?"
He made a pacifying gesture and smiled affably. “Arrived yesterday, on the same train you did, my sweet.” He flicked his eyes significantly in my direction. “Could I talk to you alone, love?"
"No,” she snapped rudely. “We're all washed up, Charles. I told you that months ago when I left the bungalow. Besides, I'm busy now. This is my lawyer, Scott Jordan.” She indicated the man with a carelessly deprecating gesture. “My husband, Charles Denney."
"How do you do,” I said.
"Fine,” he said.
I understood now why he would never be a success in talking pictures. There was nothing wrong with his diction, nor with his charm. He looked like an aging playboy, but he spoke like the head chamberlain in a harem.
Grace Denney said between her teeth, “If you insist upon following me, Charles, I'll complain to the police. That kind of publicity can hurt your career. Good-bye."
He tried to detain her. He reached for her arm. She swung around furiously and slapped his face. A red welt blossomed on his cheek. He cried out in a thin womanly bleat and slapped her back. She gasped and looked stunned.
"Here,” I said. “Let's have no more of that."
He turned on me, teeth bared. “You stay out of it. She's my wife."
A crowd of curious onlookers had begun to collect. I took her elbow firmly and said, “Let's go, Grace."
Charles Denney surprised me. He struck out at the point of my jaw, and the sonovagun was in good condition. My head snapped back with a stab of pain. He was begging for it, so I obliged. I grinned wolfishly and aimed one at his stomach. It was a good shot and I felt my fist sink in to the wrist. Denney's lungs collapsed like a punctured balloon, and the fight went out of him. He leaned against the building, his face pasty.
I turned and walked Grace to the curb and yanked open the door of a waiting cab, got her installed, climbed in beside her, and the driver gave it the gun. His engine roared and we spurted away.
He swiveled his head. “Hey, you ever fight professionally?"
"Golden gloves."
"Look, buddy, you got a lot of promise in them dukes. I know a manager who can—"
"No soap,” I told him. “I'm perfectly satisfied with my own racket."
He looked pained. “Okay,” he said. “Where we going?"
"Give him the address, Grace."
It was all the way down on Park Row, one of those ancient musty seedy buildings that had served its purpose and was marking time until the wreckers pulled it down. Lester Britt had an office on the third floor. The naked-ribbed elevator cage took us up, squealing and groaning on its cables. The hall hadn't seen a janitor's mop in months. Grace made a rabbit's nose and stepped quickly and lightly to a frosted glass door with Britt's name and the legend:
Investigations.
She turned the knob and went in. I was right at her heels when she stopped short and I had to clamp my brakes to keep from knocking her over. She was making sick, gurgling noises and trying to backtrack, but I was in the way. Then she turned and buried her face against my shoulder, clinging to me, trembling along the full length of her body. Another time this might have been a pleasant experience.
Not now. Not with this sight.
Now I could see over her shoulder. I saw Mr. Lester Britt, private eye, seated behind his desk, with a letter opener sticking out of his throat at right angles. The blade had failed to seal his wound. His jugular had spurted like a punctured wine gourd, and the whole front of his vest was sticky and viscous with the blood from his emptied veins.
He was a small man with a round face and a balding head. His eyes were glazed and his lips skinned back, leaving his teeth naked to the gums. I knew the kind of private eye he was. His office and everything about him told me. You can buy them for a dollar a dozen, the divorce specialists, the transom peepers, the deadbeat dicks hounding wage slaves who can't meet the last installment on a set of Grand Rapids furniture worth exactly ten percent of the sale price. Lester Britt, with a license in his pocket and a tin badge that permitted him to park anywhere he liked, providing he paid the fine. He had taken a job and bucked some customers who were too fast for him. A knife or a bullet or a broken skull, this was bound to happen to him sooner or later.
Grace Denney was still shivering in my arms like a woman suffering from malaria. But she hadn't screamed and I was thankful for that. “All right,” I said close to her ear. “Let's get out of here.” I almost had to carry her.
I held her hand in the elevator and it was cold as ice. Our first stop was a bar across the street, a small oasis with booths and checkered tableclothes.
"Two double brandies,” I told the waiter.
"I'll take the same,” she said.
He gave her a double-take, blinking in surprise, then shrugged and shuffled off to fill the order. I told her to wait and went up front to patronize the telephone booth. I made an anonymous call to Headquarters and hung up. I was in no mood to stick around for a long investigation, trying to convince them I didn't know the answers to any of their questions.
Back at the table, I said, “You all right, Grace?"
She swallowed hugely and nodded.
"Good,” I said. “Now listen to me. I have a hunch. What happened to Britt is probably the result of handling your case. That's why he got all worked up when you suddenly appeared at his office yesterday. Chances are he learned something he didn't want you to know. And I think the explanation can be found at the Vandam Nursing Home. I'm going out there."
She tossed off the second brandy like an aspirin tablet. It settled her nerves and put some of the color back in her cheeks. “Can I go along?” she asked.
"If you'll stay in the car and let me handle it."
She nodded quickly. “Of course."
I paid the check and we took a cab uptown to the garage and I got out the Buick. We drove across the Queensboro Bridge, heading out towards the South Shore. Grace Denney was silent, her eyes remote, sitting prim and straight, with her hands folded stiffly in her lap and the wind whipping back through her lustrous ebony hair.
At this time of the day traffic was light and the parkway unraveled swiftly under our wheels. Overhead, the sky was clear, a canopy of rich cobalt, and presently I spied a few seagulls wheeling against the horizon and I knew we were approaching the sea. I saw directions and turned off the main artery and drove along a very narrow macadam road. Every now and then a flash of blue water reeled past and the crisp tang of salt was in the air.
This was a choice expanse of realty, with entrenched wealth in fifteen room chateaus, looking out on their own private botanical gardens.
