The Body Lovers (12 page)

“He was sure it was Mitch?”

“The cabbie identified his photo. What made him remember was that Mitch tipped him enough to pay for the ticket.”

“But no I.D. on the other car?” I asked.

“They never got close enough. It was getting dark, traffic was heavy and he said it was either a dark blue or black sedan. He didn’t remember the make.”

“How about the store?”

“None of the clerks were specific about the customers, but one did sell a white negligee that day. Al checked the sales slips. It was a cash purchase with no name or address.”

I looked at Hy thoughtfully. Something was bugging me and I couldn’t reach out and touch it. I said; “Pat better have this now.”

“He’s already got it,” Hy said. “But what good’s it going to do if we don’t know who the hell we’re looking for?”

“Mitch recognized him.”

“And Mitch knew a hell of a lot of people.”

“But why him?” I insisted. “What would make one guy stand out of a crowd buying sexy clothes for his doll?”

Norman said quietly, “Maybe he’s done it before ... been messed up in this sort of thing.”

“We can find out,” Hy told us. “Pat will be checking the M.O.’s and we can give him a hand. Want to come, Mike?”

“No, you go ahead. I’m going to try a different direction. I’ll call you later.”

Hy had that puzzled look back on his face again. “Look, Mike ...”

“It’s only an idea,” I interrupted him. “We have to play this from all sides.”

Gerald Ute seemed sorry to see us go, but wasn’t insistent on our staying. We said good-by to a few of the others and Dulcie McInnes came over to walk us to the door. I told her something had come up I wanted to check on, but would see her at the Proctor Building as we planned.

Outside, Hy had flagged a cab, dropped me off opposite the News Building without asking any questions and went downtown. There was a small bar close by that the newspaper fraternity kept filled between shifts. Tim Riley was on his usual stool with his usual martini in his usual endless discussion of the New York Mets with the bartender. He was an old sports reporter assigned to the rewrite desk now, but he couldn’t get baseball out of his system.

He gave me a big grin when I sat down next to him, but I didn’t let him get started on the Mets. I said, “Favor time, Tim.”

“Mike, I haven’t got a ticket left. I...”

“Not that. It’s about Mitch Temple.”

He put his glass down, his face serious. “Anything. Just ask.”

“Did he save carbons of his columns?”

Tim grimaced with his mouth and nodded. “Sure, they all do in case they need a reference later.”

“I want to see them.”

“You can go through back issues and ...”

“That’ll take too long. I’d sooner see his carbons.”

He finished his drink with one swallow, pushed a bill across the bar and got off the stool. “Come on,” he said.

Mitch Temple’s cubicle of an office had the stale smell of disuse. An old raincoat still dangled from the hook behind the door and the ashtray was filled with snubbed butts. Somebody had gone through his drawers and left his papers stacked on his desk. Two three-drawer filing cabinets stood side by side, a couple of the drawers only partially closed, but since they only contained his original typewritten carbons stapled to their printed counterparts, there had been no thorough examination. Each folder contained his turnout for the month and they were dated back to two years ago. Some of the folders had cards clipped to their fronts cross-indexing Broadway items, rumors turning into fact, things of interest concerning personalities to be elaborated on later. I snagged the swivel chair with my toe, pulled it up in front of the files and sat down.

“Something I can help you with?” Tim asked me.

“I don’t know what I’m looking for myself.”

“Well, take your time. Nobody’s going to bother you in here. And Mike ... if you find anything, you yell, hear?”

“Don’t worry, Tim. And thanks.”

Mitch Temple had been more than an ordinary Broadway gossip columnist. Here and there little gems appeared that I remembered turning into cold, hard news stories later on. He had roved from one end of town to the other, Broadway his theme, but branching off into sidelines that turned him into a part-time crusader when he got hold of something. His series on the Mafia caused a full investigation of their activities with several convictions. Twice he got on politics and made a few faces red around town.

Dulcie McInnes and Gerald Ute appeared here and there when they either hosted a party or were guests at one. Some of Dulcie’s escorts at society soirees were international figures in politics or finance. She was top-echelon jet set, traveling all over the world for the Proctor Group. Although Mitch reported her as being at different affairs of state and involved with pleasantries accorded the United Nations delegates, she didn’t seem to show any political persuasion or be attached to anyone in particular.

Gerald Ute came in for a little closer coverage. He was always financing some far-out project or sounding off on things from scouting to the foreign problems. Twice, there was a romantic link to some prominent matron, but nothing came of it. In one column Mitch hinted that he had used his influence with the delegate of the deposed dictator of a South African nation to nail a fat mineral-rights contract for one of his companies, but in today’s business arrangements, that’s par for the course.

There were other names I recognized and others I didn’t. For three consecutive weeks Mitch hammered at the hypocrisy of the United Nations regarding their commitments, naming Belar Ris, who had come out of obscurity after World War Two with a fortune behind him and had led an uprising that turned his country’s colony into an independent nation that elected him their U.N. delegate. He was trying to force an acceptance of the part-Arabian complex headed by Naku Em Abor. Well, Mitch lost that one, I thought. The country was in and old Naku was being feted at Gerald Ute’s party right now. Mitch tried a lot, but he didn’t win them all. Despite his personal investigation and reporting of facts, two labor unions kept top hoods in office, an outlaw strike damn near destroyed the city and a leading politician was re-elected even though he had a close affiliation with the Communist Party.

I had another ten minutes before I had to leave, so I took out the last of the folders in the drawer. They made interesting reading, but weren’t at all informative. Belar Ris’s name came up again, once when he got flattened by some playboy in a gin mill and once when the Italian government accused him of being associated with a group marketing black-market medicines for huge profits. There were a few other hot squibs about show-business personalities and some minor jabs at the present administration that weren’t unusual.

About a third of Mitch’s columns had been covered, and as far as I was concerned, it had been a waste of time. It had taken more than what he had written to cause him to be killed. Anybody with any common sense wouldn’t want to tackle the entire newspaper staff and the police. And right there was the rub again. Supposing it wasn’t someone with common sense ... just a plain psychopath?

At twelve-twenty-five I was in the lobby of the Proctor Group Building getting a nervous look from a night watchman. Five minutes later Dulcie came in with a wave to both of us and he looked relieved to see her. Someplace she had changed to a skirt and sweater with a short coat thrown over her shoulders and she looked like a teen-ager out on a late date.

“Been here long?”

“Five minutes. Good party?”

“A social success. You left early or you would have met the great heads of great nations.”

I said one word under my breath and she suppressed a giggle, her eyes laughing at me.

She had the key to a private elevator that whisked us up to the tenth floor, the area reserved for the photographers. She found the switch, threw the lights on and led me down the corridor past the vast film-developing and processing laboratory, the stages where the models were posed against exotic backdrops, down to the offices where we found the one labeled
Theodore Gates.

“Here we are.” She pushed the door open and stepped inside, turned the button on the desk lamp and walked to the cabinets along the wall. “Service, wasn’t it?”

I nodded. “Greta Service.”

She slid the drawer out, thumbed through a few envelopes and drew out one with Greta’s name typed across the top. Inside were duplicate photos of the ones in the master file and a resume of Greta’s experience. The address was the one in Greenwich Village.

“No good,” I said. “We’ll need a later address.”

She stuffed the folder back and shut the drawer. “Wait a minute.” There was a rotary card file on Gates’ desk and she flipped it around, stopped and said, “Could this be it?”

I looked at it. The notation listed her name, the Village number with a line drawn through it and another at the Sandelor Hotel, a fourth-rate fleabag on Eighth Avenue. A series of symbols at the bottom of the card may have been significant to Gates but didn’t mean anything to me. In the bottom comer was another name,
Howell.

“Well?”

“It’s the only lead I got. I’m going to follow it up.”

“Perhaps you could call first and...”

“No ... I don’t want to spook her off.” I laid my hand over hers. “Thanks, kitten. I appreciate this.”

There was a sad little expression in her eyes. “Would it be too much to ask... well, you
do
have me curious... can I go with you?”

I took her arm. “Sure, why not?”

We got out of the cab at the Sandelor Hotel and went into the lobby. It was a place for transients and permanent guests too impoverished or old to go any further. A musty smell of stale smoke and hidden decay hung in the air where it had been gathering for decades. The carpet was threadbare in front of the sagging cracked leather chairs, and in line to the desk and staircase. Drooping potted palms were spotted in the comers, two in front of the elevator that had an OUT OF ORDER sign on it.

The desk clerk was another relic, half asleep in a chair, three empty beer bottles beside him. I walked up and said, “You have a Greta Service here?”

He looked at me through half-opened eyes and shook his head. “Nobody by that name.”

“You sure?”

“I said so, didn’t I?”

Then I remembered the name on the bottom of the card and said, “How about Howell?”

He turned partly around, glanced at a chart pinned to the wall and nodded. “Second floor, two-oh-nine.” He reached for the phone.

“Forget it,” I told him.

For just a second he started to get irritated, then he took one hell of a good look at me, seemed to shrink back a little, made a motion with his shoulders and settled back into the chair. I took Dulcie’s arm and steered her toward the stairs.

I knocked on the door twice before I heard a muffled sound from inside. When I knocked again a sleepy voice said, “All right, all right, don’t knock the door down.” I heard a chair being kicked, a soft curse, then a stripe of light showed under the door. The chain slid back, the lock clicked and the door swung open.

I said, “Hello, Greta,”

It was her. It wasn’t the Greta Service of the photographs, but it was her. Some of the beauty had eroded from her face, showing in the texture of her skin and the momentary void of her eyes. Her jet black hair was tangled and fell around her shoulders while she clutched the front of a cheap bathrobe together to keep it closed.

I pushed her inside, took Dulcie with me and closed the door. Greta had gone pretty far down the line. The room was bare as the law allowed. One closet showed only a few clothes and an empty gin bottle lay on the nightstand beside the bed with a broken glass on the floor.

She looked from me to Dulcie, then back to me again. “What do you want?”

“You, Greta,” I said.

“What for? What the hell do you mean by ... ?” She stopped, took a longer look at me, then added, “Don’t I know you?”

“Mike Hammer.”

Then she knew me. “You bastard,” she hissed.

“Ease off, kid. Don’t blame your brother’s fall on me. He was the one who wanted me to find you.”

Greta took a step back, faltering a little. “Okay, you found me. Now get out of here.” For some reason she avoided looking at my eyes.

“What’s with this bit?” I asked her.

Her head came up hesitantly, her lips tight. “Leave me alone.”

“Harry wants to see you.”

She spun around, staring dully into the dirty glass of the window. “Like this?”

“I don’t think he cares.”

“Tell him for me that I’ll see him when I’m ready.”

“What happened, Greta?”

We exchanged glances in the reflection of the glass. “I didn’t make it, that’s all. I had big ideas and they didn’t work out.”

“So what do I tell Harry?”

“I’m working,” she said. “I make a buck here and there. My time will come.” There was a funny catch in her throat. When I didn’t answer she spun around, her hands going to her hips. The robe came open as she stood there glaring at me and under the nightgown her body was outlined in lush perfection. “Just tell him to stay off my back until I’m ready, you hear me? And quit following me around. I’ll do what I want to do my own way and I don’t need any interference. He didn’t do so good his way either, did he? All right, at least I’m on the outside doing what I can. Now lay off me and get out of here!”

“Greta... want to talk about Helen Poston?”

There was no physical reaction at all. “She’s dead. She killed herself.”

“Why?”

“How would I know? She’d been brooding over some man. If she was stupid enough to kill herself over one she deserved it.”

“Maybe she didn’t kill herself,” I said.

A small shudder crossed her shoulders and her hands were clenched into fists. “When you’re dead you’re dead. What difference does it make any more?”