The Big Kiss-Off of 1944: A Jack LeVine Mystery (12 page)

“I like your friend.”

“Jack, I’ve been threatened and it was damn ugly. This morning.”

“By phone?”

“Yes.”

“They’ve really been cranking out the calls this morning. My life was declared worthless just a few minutes ago.”

“God, they called you, too?”

“Told me to get off the case or I’d be cross-ventilated. What did they tell you.”

“To take you off the case.”

“Or?”

“Or they’d make it rough on me.”

“How, physically?”

He faltered. “I assume so. They just said, ‘Well make it rough on you.’”

“A man with a raspy kind of voice.”

“That’s right. What do you make of this, Jack?”

“It’s nuts. First they want a contact to make a deal. I go to Smithtown, nothing. Now they’re playing tough.”

“It is quite strange. I don’t like it.”

“And you don’t know the half of it. Yesterday morning at 3:00
A.M.
our friend Rubine, late of Smithtown and the universe, came to my apartment on the lam. He told me to drive upstate, where I’d find the films in a farmhouse. He was a scared little guy. I drive him up and when we hit Route 28, a patrol car tails us and pulls us over. We get out, put our hands up and then a piano fell on my head. I wake up, Rubine’s gone and there’s blood all over the road.”

“Jack, please.” Butler sounded ill.

“Life isn’t nice, Butler. I’m sorry about it but you hired me to tell you things and I’m telling them to you.”

“I understand, but not so graphic, please.”

“That’s the only ugly part; the rest is low comedy. I keep going, schmuck that I am, and visit the farmhouse where Duke Fenton, Rubine’s ex-partner, stashed the films. I get there and a fifty-year-old woman holds a gun on me and sends over a seven-foot caretaker to play catch with my head. Net result after all the heavy stuff was that she knew nothing from nothing. Another net result is a little item in the
News
this morning, saying that an unidentified stiff was found doing the Australian crawl in a drainage pipe near where I got sapped. Figures to be Rubine.”

“And this all happened yesterday?”

“Big day.”

“And why didn’t you call me when you got back?” He sounded angry. “I hired you, why the hell do I have to call and pump information from you? I’m buying information, Jack.”

“Hold on. First of all, I would have told you eventually. In fact, I just told you about it, willingly and, I thought, pithily. I remember you telling me to stop at one point. Second of all, it’s a funny story but it doesn’t get us any further; probably takes us back a couple of paces. Third and last, by the time I got home yesterday I hardly knew which end of the phone to use. I’d been hit on the head a few times, like I said.”

“Sorry, Jack, it’s no lack of faith on my part. This has just been …” his voice started to break, “very upsetting.”

“Look, just lay low for a bit. Don’t move around any more than necessary. We’re up against a very rough bunch of people and worse than that, a very unpredictable bunch. You know anybody who packs a gun?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Keep him with you.”

“And you, Jack?”

“I’m paid to stick my neck out.”

The next step, of course, was to call Kerry and warn her, and I cursed myself for not forcing a phone number out of her. She could be in really terrible danger and her failure to call did little to reassure me. I would have to sweat it out until the next day, when I could at least call the theater and leave a message. For now, I would try and pretend it was just another Sunday in June; nobody had slugged me and I was just a stocky Queens Jew sitting around in his underwear.

S
O IT WAS SUNDAY
for a while. The Yankees split a pair and LeVine split a half-dozen beers with Irv Rapp from 3D, diagonally across the hall from me. Irv’s in hats. We talked about the old days, wished they were back. Irv’s doing well, got a sub-contract on sailor caps and swears he’ll buy a Packard when the war’s over. Kitty called and we had a giggly, inconclusive talk, like two twenty-year-olds sharing breakfast after their first night in the sack.

Which brought me to Monday.

Monday when the whole Kerry Lane case started to make perfect and incredible sense.

Monday when I wished it hadn’t.

I walked into 1651 Broadway at about 9:30, insulted the elevator jockey, and unlocked my office door a lot more carefully than usual. The outer office was unoccupied and untouched, but I suddenly heard a rattling noise in the inner sanctum. I turned the key as quietly as possible, then leaned against the door with my full weight, drew my Colt and burst inside, yelling, “What the hell …” at the source of the noise. Predictably, there was no reply. The metal piece at the end of the window shade continued to rap against the window pane, blown about by my electric fan, which I had neglected to shut off. I cleared my throat and returned the Colt to my pocket.

It was at least an hour too early to call the theater so I killed time by reading the papers—Tracy was zeroing in on a mastermind killer with a deformed head—and answering some calls. An advertising man from Darien was sure that his wife was taking care of the private school headmaster in the afternoons and wanted his house staked out. I told him no dice and gave him the numbers of a couple of shamuses who were good, needed a buck, and enjoyed that type of work. He told me how much he loved his wife.

At eleven I rang backstage at the Booth and asked to leave a message for Kerry Lane. I was asked to hang on and was given over to an assistant stage manager. This time I asked if Kerry was around.

“Not right now, Mac.”

“Can I leave a message?”

“That wouldn’t make much sense.”

I got annoyed. “It makes sense if there’s no other way to reach her.”

“No, it don’t make sense because she left the show.”

I watched a couple of file clerks pick their teeth across the air shaft and was surprised at how hard my heart was beating.

“Hello? You still on, Mac?”

“When did she leave the show?”

“This morning. Called up and said she had to go home—somebody in the family’s sick.”

“So she’s out for good?”

“That’s what I wanted to know. Kerry said she’d try and come back in a few weeks, but she wasn’t sure.”

“How’d she sound, nervous?”

There was a pause and I heard breathing. He was thinking. “Is this the law?”

“Private investigator. Kerry hired me to take care of something.”

“She in trouble?”

“Nothing serious. Look, you have any idea where she might be headed?”

“Not really, but I figured she might be from around Philly. Something she said once. We were on the road in Boston and she asked me a couple of times if there was any chance of us playing Philly.”

“And you got the idea she wasn’t very anxious to go there, that it?”

“That’s it. You’re pretty good. I had the feeling that if I’d told her we were going there, she’d have quit the show flat, no matter how much she needed the dough.”

Someone had turned on all the lights for me. I got excited and I got scared.

“Hey, shamus. What’s going on?”

“I’m not altogether sure, buddy.” I paused. “What’d you think of her?”

“Kerry? She was broke and down and out when she got the part, but I always figured her for class. Am I right?”

“I think so. Thanks a lot.”

“Shamus?”

“Yeah.”

“Look out for her. She’s a sweet kid.”

“I’ll try, and thanks again.”

I slammed the phone into its cradle, grabbed my hat off the moose head and locked up shop. I pushed the elevator bell over and over. It crept up to nine and the doors opened as slowly as a bank vault’s.

“Keep your shirt on, Mr. LeVine.”

“I want to catch a train, Eddie.”

He turned and smiled. “A hot one, eh Mr. LeVine?”

“Very hot. A blockbuster.” I was showing off.

He whistled. “Christ, Mr. LeVine. Wish I could go with you, wherever it is. It have anything to do with that doll I took up last week?”

I stared at him and he knew he’d hit the jackpot. Eddie smiled all over.

“Maybe I will take you into the business, Eddie. You’ve got the nose.”

The elevator stopped. “Main floor, Mr. LeVine. First case I take, she’s gotta have big knockers.”

“All my cases have big knockers, Eddie.” LeVine the big shot idol of office boys and messengers. But I was working up a fine head of excitement; this bewildering ball-breaker of a case was becoming comprehensible.

It was still an hour before the lunch traffic, so I grabbed a hack with no trouble and got to Penn Station in five minutes. Cabbie #5322–106–8632, Lou LaMonte, admirably filled the time, first by whistling “Lazy Mary, Will You Get Up?” and then by telling me about two Negroes he’d picked up the night before.

“This one shine had a diamond ring the size of an apple.” He turned around. “Swear to Christ, this big.” He made a circle with his thumb and middle finger and sailed through a red light.

“You ran the light, Lou.”

“Fuck the lights.”

I liked his style, threw him a bill for the fifty-cent ride and ran into big Penn. I knew the schedules cold, raced to Gate 26 and had the 11:40 to Philly, Baltimore, and Washington beat by five minutes. The train was crowded: half soldiers and half businessmen and I could only manage a seat next to a chubby Rotarian. We were right across the aisle from the john and the traffic was murder.

The Rotarian was red-faced Fred Garnett, whose card said “Notions, Dry Goods.” While I was trying to piece together this incredible jigsaw of the Kerry Lane affair, the train started forward with that inevitably surprising and jarring first tug, and Fred was babbling on about the notions business.

“Now your products for the home, that’s where your money is once this war is over.”

I grunted. Kerry blackmailed, Fenton-Rubine killed, by whom?

“Course, if I had any loose change I’d get into home-building faster’n you could say Jack Robinson. This whole prefabrication process is going to pick up steam in about, say, five years. Put together houses easy as a model train set, probably easier.” He chuckled. “Then you’ve got yourself a multi-
billion-
dollar business.”

I had to get rid of him. Some people might let you alone, but not the Freddie Old Boy Garnetts of the world.

“Didn’t get your line, mister,” he said.

“Government work,” I said stonily.

“Uh, huh.” He chuckled. “That’s the life. Get a civil service job and never let go.”

I said nothing. His smile drooped a little around the edges.

“Civil service?”

“Hardly,” I said, giving him a truly evil smile. “And I really would rather not talk about it here, Fred, if you don’t mind.” I whipped out an old customs inspector badge someone once gave me for a gag. Before he could read the fine print, it was tucked inside my jacket again.

“Spy stuff, huh,” he said.

I gave him a long hard stare. It’s not my best weapon and you have to be pretty dumb to take it seriously. Fred did.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. He went back to his little manila folder and I tried to do some more thinking. I wasn’t used to complicated cases and I had to take this one from the top: Kerry scared, visits LeVine, says she’s being blackmailed by someone named Fenton. Dirty films. Butler finds out, she’s out of show. Visit Fenton, Fenton dead. Call from Butler. Being blackmailed, girl in show, doesn’t want publicity. Go to Smith-town, nobody home. Call Butler, Butler upset. Picture of Dewey and banker, newspapers all over. Visit from Rubine. Rubine scared, Rubine dead. Threats to LeVine, threats to Butler. By whom? For what reason? Kerry gone someplace, maybe Philadelphia. I was hitting Philly almost blind, but I was curiously optimistic. Also I was talking to myself. Fred was listening. I turned on him and he bounded out of his seat like a man with a hotfoot.

“’Scuse me. Guess I’m just an old busybody,” he said, smiling miserably. He pushed open the air-locked door and hurried to the next car. A very young soldier observed the scene and smiled at me. I nodded gravely but he just laughed. His leg was in a cast and he was home and things that went on in Pennsy cars were pretty small and comic to him. He was right, but I had my little work to do. Like think of a way to gain access to the inner sanctum of a banker named Eli W. Savage. You remember him. The guy shaking hands with Tom Dewey.