Pardon My Body (4 page)

Mike shrugged.

“Okay,” I said. “I think your story will just about
stand up with O'Cassidy. But I also think Mr. Bule is going to have some fast thinking to do about the late Mr. George Clark.”

“It ain't Harry's fault a friend gets bumped by some dirty knifer who sneaks into the house in the middle of the night—and it ain't mine, either.” grunted Mike. “We acted with the best intentions.”

“Mike,” I said, “there isn't a thing wrong with your argument—except one. Mr. George Clark walked into a ritzy inn out in Connecticut last night with a well-known citizen and walked right out leaving his unusual friend with a Task Force dagger sticking out of his beautifully-laundered dress shirt.”

I passed through the swing doors just as the first customers of the day were moving in. I didn't think Mike would be in much shape to deal with them….

I
F YOU'RE THINKING OF
paying a visit to our town you needn't bother to take in the Fiftieth Street sector. It might spoil your appetite for dinner. Crummy is the word. A rundown zone of walk-up apartment houses, hamburger stands and an air of general dispiritedness. Walking into it only a few blocks west of Broadway you feel you ought to have put on a shabby suit and soiled linen and given a miss to cleaning your teeth that morning. You have to sidetrack off Fiftieth to find the Longmoor Apartments. I didn't have any trouble. I have a good sense of smell.

Once upon a time the Longmoor was probably a good second-best hotel. That would be around the time conservative brokers were bowling down Wall Street in open carriages. Right now it was a shabby, sprawling brownstone with paint coming off the woodwork and rust going on the ironwork. It ran to
five storeys and if you lived at the top you'd still know they were cooking cabbage in the basement.

But they had quite a big reception hall. Behind the desk was a pert young woman of about twenty wearing a hairdo and calculated manner which constituted a
prima facie
libel on Miss Veronica Lake's best pinup expression. Eyes that had grown prematurely old because they had seen too much stared out of the pixie-like face. She wore a low V-cut dress and leaned forward slightly in case I was interested. I wasn't.

But I had called in to pry some information or something out of the place and maybe the proprietor kept a padlock on his mouth. I ought to be glad the boss hadn't put some pimply hard-faced male clerk behind that desk. So I brought out the Bogard charm and dusted it off. That baby-you're-so-wonderful-I-can't-believe-it look. It had never done a thing for me among the young ladies of my acquaintance, but you never can tell. It might look original to one who no doubt never got anything except the direct approach.

Apparently it did. She tossed her near-platinum mane so that I could watch it slope back and let her eyes flicker. They were clear blue eyes. Too clear.

I said, “I really came to see a friend who lives here, but now that I've seen you it doesn't seem to matter….”

“Say, I don't know what you mean, but I'm
pleased t'meetcha.” The vowels and consonants were strictly Lower East Side. She used both hands to give a smooth-down to the female contours. They were strictly dynamite in any territory.

I leaned over the desk top and breathed into her right ear, “Did anyone ever tell you what lovely eyes you've got?”

I don't think I'd ever said anything so corny even in my collegiate days when I wore a raccoon coat and played a ukulele. But I was beginning to get embarrassed. Thirty-six is too old to start being a wolf. I ought to have a wife and kids and well-worn slippers by the fireside and solidly respectable neighbours instead of a lonely apartment and friends who lived on bourbon and their nerve-ends and kept me awake until seven in the morning talking intellectual moonshine. Just the nice, quiet marrying kind who never got around to it. Some home-loving girl missed a good man.

The pathos of it would have touched me if Miss Lake II hadn't done it first. She gave me a coy pat on the cheek. I let my arm slide around her waist. She wasn't wearing a girdle. At twenty you don't have to.

“Maybe,” I said carefully, “maybe we should make a date?”

She said, “Uh-huh.”

“Tonight at eight?”

“Yeah—I guess I could fix it.”

“Nice long moonlight drive?”

“Yeah—then what?”

I gave her the best squeeze I could with a yard of desk between us. She reached up and pulled my head down and let me have it. She had a big slash of a mouth and all of it was open. When I got out of the clinch I had half of her lipstick and the mark of her front canine tooth.

“Babe, I could go for you kinda big,” she said with the fine detachment of one who says it often.

I thought I'd sacrificed enough in the pursuit of truth. “Look,” I said hurriedly, “I'd better see this friend before I go.”

“Which guy d'ya want, sweetie?”

“Guy named Harry Bule,” I told her.

She gave me a stare. Maybe I didn't look the sort to go running around with the Harry Bules of this city. At that stage I wouldn't know. Though I could guess.

“He's a couple rooms on the first floor. Fourteen and fifteen. 'Smatter fact, he went up a half-hour since. He ain't been down again.”

I put my handkerchief away. “I'll go up, baby. I'll be seeing you.”

“You can ride in the elevator,” she said.

I hadn't supposed they owned one. It had probably
been installed to take the lush-heads up Saturday nights. You could operate it yourself by pressing a numbered button. I got out at the first floor. They even had carpet on it. Fourteen and fifteen were almost opposite the elevator shaft. I tried fourteen. No reply. I got the same result from fifteen. Mr. Harry Bule was either giving himself a sleep or…

The memory of the ash-blond killer brought me up with a jerk and the palms of my hands suddenly went sticky. I turned the door handle and found it wasn't locked and marched in with only slightly more aplomb than if I had been entering a lion's cage for the first time.

The room was surprisingly well furnished. Apparently Mr. Bule had added a few luxuries of his own to the purely formal concessions provided by the hotel. I numbered the radio, bureau and a deep hide-leather armchair among them. The owner was nowhere in sight. I moved silently to the connecting door on my left and pulled it open. The bedroom lay exposed to view. Just a small room with a single bed, a fitted clothes closet, wash-bowl with hot and cold water, and a bedside table carrying a reading lamp. But still no sign of Mr. Bule. Maybe he'd gone out by the fire escape, doubtless for the best of reasons.

The bedside table also carried a leather-bound
notebook, I leafed through half a dozen pages and tossed it back. Just a pencilled list of horses and bets, with various calculations footnoted. The closet contained three suits of the flashier kind and a heavy ulster greatcoat. I wandered back into the sitting room. Maybe the bureau would yield a clue, though I hadn't much hope. Mr. Bule's more doubtful transactions were not likely to be set down on paper. Still, it was worth trying. But the bureau was locked. Perhaps he
did
write things down. I stood there trying to figure out the next move. Breaking open a bureau in a room in which you have no right to be anyway is liable to be frowned upon in police circles.

The place was as quiet as a morgue. Or I was too preoccupied to hear even the muffled clatter of the routine hotel sounds. But suddenly my back hair began to stand up in the little quivering bristles and I knew that the next move was going to be made for me.

“Don't do nothing,” said a man's voice, “that is, unless you want a slug in your guts.”

“I'm not doing a thing,” I said.

His voice came nearer. “If you're trying to figure out how I got here, I was in the toilet down the corridor. A guy oughta take everything into account before he starts trespassing.”

Then I felt something hard pressed into the small of my back. The voice went on, “Okay—you can turn round now—I guess I'd better take a gander at you. But keep them hands outa your pockets.”

I turned slowly and looked into the thin, darkly sallow face of a man about my own age who wore a striped suit from the same no-good family as the lot in the closet. Goddammit, Congress ought to pass a law stopping tailors making suits like that. Mr. Bule eyed me with no show of brotherly love.

“When a guy busts into my apartment there ain't nothin' to stop me committing violence on his person and askin' for an explanation afterwards,” he began conversationally.

His eyes flickered from me to the oversize near-gold ring he wore on the middle finger of the hand which held a .32 Smith and Wesson automatic pistol and back again.

Deliberately I started to put my hand into the pocket of my raincoat.

“I said to keep them hands outa there,” he snarled.

“Look,” I said, “in the recent international fuss in Europe half the German Army seemed to be loosing off miscellaneous weapons at me personally for weeks on end. And those boys weren't scared of pulling their triggers.”

“Well, I guess you can smoke if you want,” said the intrepid gunman uncertainly. “But, mind, I've got this rod just in case…”

I got my pipe out and stuffed it with tobacco. The operation helped to hide the fact that my hands were in about as bad shape as his. Just then the pair of us would have got a 4F card in any spread-fingers test and no further questions asked.

I said, “You wouldn't be Harry Bule, would you?”

“I would. And you got a helluva nerve bustin' in like it was your place.”

“Just a friendly visit.”

“Yeah? I ain't never seen you in my life. And that ain't no loss, either.”

He groped for a cigarette with his left hand, put it in his mouth, then groped again for matches. I struck one of mine and held it out towards him, and as he bent forward, I knocked the Smith & Wesson spinning from his hand. Then I kicked it under the bureau and took a seat on the arm of the big chair.

“Now we can face a nice gentlemanly chat,” I said.

Bule's rat face was twitching. “You think you're goddamned smart, dontcha?”

“Smart enough not to recommend police suspects to Mike Hannigan,” I said evenly.

The sallow complexion paled another shade. He ran the tip of his tongue round his lips before he spoke.

“You ain't no copper or you'd have sprung your badge on me. What the hell are you—a shamus?”

“I'm a good friend of yours if you had the wit to know it. I'm putting you a jump ahead of the police.”

“I ain't done a thing they can put the finger on me for. A guy can recommend another guy to a room, can't he?”

“He can—but he should make sure the client isn't taking it on the lam first.”

Bule shifted uneasily. “I tell ya I know nothing. I was just doing a friendly turn.”

I stood up and then yanked him towards me by his scrambled-egg tie. His teeth bit on his tongue.

“Listen you oily yegg,” I breathed. “When the cops get you down to headquarters they won't waste time bandying nice cosy words like me. They'll sit you slap under the lights and you'll find yourself talking so fast that the shorthand writers will be sending in an official protest. Now—give. Who was the man you sent to Mike Hannigan?”

“I don't know.” Bule's voice cracked in a little scream. “I was told his name was George Clark, thassall…”

“Did you see him?”

“No—I was asked to fix him up by a…a client.”

“Who?”

“I don't know.” The frightened eyes stared up at me. “Please…don't beat me up. I'm giving it to you straight. It was a telephone message from someone who didn't give a name—a man. He said for me to find a quiet, out-of-the-way place for a friend to rest up in and there'd be a couple Cs in it for me. I got the first one by mail the next day and the other the day after.”

I let him go and he sank down on a hard chair.

“Why should a man you don't even know pick on you?” I said. Then I got it. “You and Mike Hannigan run a nice little side business fixing up guys who don't want to be seen around—at a price. But why couldn't this one come to you direct?”

Bule shifted about like he was in the hot seat. “It ain't done that way,” he muttered. “I never see the customer. I make it a rule to keep outa trouble.”

“Who's being smart now?” I jeered. “But you weren't smart enough to make it a rule not to tangle with killers on the run.”

His eyes widened in panic. “I don't know a thing about no killing,” he screamed.

“You will,” I said grimly. “How does this go-between come to know you?”

Bule wetted his lips again. “I've had this arrangement with Mike Hannigan for three or four years. I guess it kinda gets around I can fix things. It don't happen often—maybe a half dozen times in a year. If anybody calls me up with a proposition I'm willing to listen if the guy's okay….”

“You mean if he's got two hundred bucks to kick in,” I said.

Bule flared for a second. “All right, so that's the way it is. So what the hell does it matter to you? There ain't nothing illegal in getting a room for a guy.”

“It depends on the guy,” I said. “The way you go about it you
could
be an accessory after the fact.”

I eyed him over. You never can be sure, but I had the idea that Mr. Harry Bule had told me the truth about the unknown intermediary who asked him to accommodate Mr. George Clark—as if
that
was his name. There was still a chance he might have a clue, though. Without knowing it.

“What kind of voice had the caller got?” I asked.

“Kinda high-toned—though he was trying to talk like he might be next door to a muckheel,” answered Bule shrewdly.