The Cutie (14 page)

“Ed can wait,” I snarled at him. “Just like I did.”

“They didn’t want to let you go, boy,” said Clancy. He managed to look aggrieved and to keep smiling at the same time. “It took some hard work to get you out, Clay.”

“I am going home,” I told him. “You can tell Ed that. You can tell him that I’m going home. And when I get there I am going to eat some real food and then I am going to go to sleep in a real bed and I am going to take a shower with real soap and real water, and when I am damn good and ready to see people I will let Ed know.”

“Ed is kind of upset, Clay. Take the advice of a friend, don’t make him mad at you.”

“Why not? I’m mad at him. And at you, too. And everybody else. Tell Ed I’ll see him when I get back to the human race.”

I left him and took a cab home, and undertipped the driver for the hell of it. When he growled at me, I growled back. Then I growled at the doorman for good measure. I went up in the elevator, growling for practice, and found Ella waiting for me in the living room.

She came running across the room to me when I walked in. “Clay! They let you go!”

“I broke out,” I told her. “I chewed through the bars.”

“Clay,” she said, “I was terrified for you. And when I read in the paper—”

“The paper! It got into the goddam paper?”

“All about the girl who was killed—”

“That’s sweet,” I said. “That’s goddam sweet.” I stomped around the room, kicking every piece of furniture I saw. It hadn’t even occurred to me that I was going to show up in the newspapers, and now that it did occur to me it made me madder than ever. The cutie, the boy I was looking for, the boy who had started this whole thing in the first place by setting Billy-Billy up to fry for his murder—he was going to read the newspaper story about me, and he was going to see the connection between me and Billy-Billy, through the organization, and he was going to figure it out that I was after him. He was going to be on guard now, he wasn’t going to feel safe any more. So he’d start covering himself on all sides. And if the job of finding him had been tough up to now, it was going to get even tougher from here on out.

I was sick of the whole thing. I was hot and tired and hungry and my bones ached and I didn’t care if the whole world blew up. I might even stand by and cheer if it did. The hell with everything.

And then Ella said, “Clay, did you kill her?”

I stopped my pacing and stared at her. She was looking at me, serious and worried and very earnest, and I realized she thought maybe I did kill Betty Benson. And that put the capper on the whole thing.

“No,” I said. “I did not kill the little bitch. I talked to her, and she told me all about Mavis St. Paul’s string of rich boyfriends, and then I went away, and somebody else came along and killed her. The same guy who killed Mavis. Because Betty Benson was Mavis St. Paul’s best friend.”

“I’m glad you didn’t, Clay,” she said.

“That’s damn nice of you,” I said. “You’re glad I didn’t kill Betty Benson. That’s peachy keen of you. I’m glad I meet with your goddam approval.”

“Clay—”

“Well, let me tell you something,” I said. “I didn’t kill Betty Benson, but if Ed had told me to kill her, I would have. If Ed told me to kill you, I’d do it. I’ve killed people in the past, and I’ll undoubtedly kill lots more people in the future, and if you don’t like it nobody’s keeping you here. And I’ll tell you right now one guy I’m going to kill, and that’s definite. The guy who started this whole mess, the one who killed Mavis St. Paul and Betty Benson. I am going to shoot that bastard down, and I am going to be
very
emotional about it. Do you hear me?”

“Clay, you’re tired,” she said.

“So what? You’ve been pussyfooting around the edges of my job, afraid to look in and see exactly what it is I’m doing. Well,
look
in. I’m Ed Ganolese’s hired boy, goddam it to hell, and I do what he tells me and that means
anything
he tells me. And the fact that I’m in love with you doesn’t change a goddam thing.”

I stopped then, and stared at her. That last sentence had come out before I realized it. I hadn’t known I was going to say that, I hadn’t even known I was thinking it. Now, I just listened to the words, echoing in the room, and I couldn’t say anything else.

“You’re tired, Clay,” she said. “You’d better get some sleep. Come on. Come on, Clay.”

“All right,” I said.

We went to the bedroom, and I undressed and went to bed, and the bed was incredibly soft after that miserable metal slab at the jail. I lay there listening to the echo of what I’d said to Ella, and I wondered at it.

Ella crawled into bed with me, and snuggled close against me. “I’ll keep you warm,” she said.

“Ella,” I said.

“You’re tired,” she told me.

“Not that tired.”

And after a while, I fell asleep, and I didn’t hate the world so much any more.

It was dark when I woke up, and Ella was gone. The clock said it was almost eight-thirty, so Ella was at work. She was a dancer, in the chorus at the Tambarin, and worked from eight till two.

I lay there in the pleasant darkness for a minute, not thinking about much of anything, and then my stomach let me know it was empty. I was starving, now that I thought about it, so I got out of bed, pulled on some clothes, stopped off at the bathroom to throw cold water on my face, and padded into the kitchen.

There was a note for me on the kitchen table: “Clay, There’s a casserole in the oven. Turn the oven on to 350 for twenty minutes. Beer in the refrigerator. I love you. Ella.”

I started the oven, had a couple of cups of coffee while waiting for the casserole to get ready, then ate and had a bottle of beer. And then I was ready to think.

I sat in my thinking chair in the living room, a bottle of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, and I looked around for a starting place. Betty Benson was as good a place to start as any. The same guy who had killed Mavis St. Paul had also killed Betty Benson. I didn’t know why he’d killed Mavis, but I had a pretty good idea why he’d had to kill Betty Benson. She knew something that would link him to Mavis’s killing. What-ever that knowledge was, she obviously hadn’t realized its significance.

And the killer hadn’t realized that I’d already talked to Betty Benson, before he got to her. Which meant there was a good chance that whatever it was he was trying to silence when he killed Betty Benson was in my notebook right now.

I went back out to the bedroom, found my notebook, and carried it back to my thinking chair and my beer. I studied the list of names Betty Benson had given me, and I felt very glum. I had a list of suspects a mile long.

There was Cy Grildquist, the producer Mavis had played around with. And Grildquist’s wife was a possibility too, come to think of it. She’d been married to Grildquist, Mavis had shown up and departed, and now she wasn’t married to him any more. There might be something doing there.

So there were two possibles. Johnny Ricardo, the nightclub owner, was a third. And Alan Petry, the ex-boyfriend turned cop. And Petry was married now, so that might bring in another suspect, Petry’s wife. Next, Paul Devon, the drama teacher. And the husband out of Mavis’s past, the guy she’d married in Belleville, Illinois. And Ernest Tesselman was still a good strong possibility. I wasn’t about to give him a clean bill of health just yet.

Which made a grand total of eight people, out of whom I had met and talked to only one so far. Ernest Tesselman. The rest were strangers to me.

Well, they wouldn’t be strangers long. I was about to go visiting. And, come to think of it, I had a whole goddam organization to help me. So far, they hadn’t been any help at all, but that was about to change.

The nice thing about the organization I had behind me was that it had connections here, there and everywhere. There is hardly anybody living or working in New York who doesn’t touch some part of the organization somewhere, either in his work or in his play. Put the right parts to work, and I could get information on almost anybody in town.

My first call was to Archie Freihofer. The names on my list were mostly men, rich men who liked expensive tail. Archie, being overseer of the
joie de vivre
girls, was the obvious guy to know these people.

“I read about you in the papers, baby,” Archie cooed, when I told him who I was. “You got a good press agent.”

“And you got a lousy sense of humor,” I told him. “Listen, I’ve got some more checking for you to do.”

“Anything, sweetie.”

I gave him the names of Cy Grildquist, Johnny Ricardo, Paul Devon and, for the hell of it, Alan Petry. “All of these people knew Mavis St. Paul,” I said. “I want to know when they saw Mavis last, what was the situation between them and Mavis lately, and where were they when Mavis was getting hers.”

“I don’t know, baby,” he said. “The only one I know for sure is Johnny Ricardo. I can check him easy. The rest are strangers.”

“Maybe some of the girls know them.”

“I’ll ask around.”

“Good boy.”

Next, I called Fred Maine, my bought cop. “There’s a cop somewhere in New York,” I told him, “name of Alan Petry. I’d like you to get me some information on him.”

“Sure thing, Clay,” he said. “What’s up?”

“I’m not exactly sure,” I said. You do not give bought cops extraneous information. “I just follow orders.”

“What do you want to know, Clay?”

“Where was he all afternoon yesterday,” I said. “And I hear he’s married. I’d like to know what his home life is like, is he content to be married or does he play around? And if he plays around, does Mrs. Petry know it?”

“Gee, Clay,” he said doubtfully. “I don’t know. Stuff like that might be tough to find out.”

“See what you can do,” I said, and he promised he would.

Next, Paul Devon, the drama teacher. How to put the organization to work on him? I thought about it for a minute, and there was my connection. Drama teachers teach young actors and actresses. Young actors and actresses are part of the arty Greenwich Village world, and are prime customers for the cheaper drugs, particularly marijuana. So I called Junky Stein, who’s The Man for that area, distributor to all the retailers downtown.

He was home, which was lucky, and when I told him I wanted some information, he said, “Name it.”

“I’m interested in a guy named Paul Devon,” I said. “Drama teacher over in the Village. I want to know any and all connections between him and a girl named Mavis St. Paul.”

“
That
broad! Because of her, I spent four hours in a goddam jail cell.”

“Don’t feel bad, I spent nineteen.”

“I heard about that, Clay. That was a rough deal.”

“Yeah, well, that’s the way it goes. I also want to know where Paul Devon was yesterday afternoon, especially around four o’clock.”

“I’ll see what I can get, Clay,” he said.

Cy Grildquist was next. I thought about him for a while. Cy Grildquist, he produces plays on Broadway. Therefore, he works with about a million unions, the stagehands’ union and the actors’ union and the electricians’ union and the designers’ union and the ushers’ union and the theater-managers’ union and half a dozen other unions. And one of the pies in which Ed Ganolese has a finger is the New York City union movement. There is a fantastic amount of money in a union, and Ed wouldn’t pass up a thing like that for anybody.

So I called a union man named Bull Rocco, a boy who is strong on the rights of labor, particularly on the rights of labor to unionize and to pay dues. “Bull,” I said. “This is Clay. I wonder if you could do a little checking for me.”

“I read about you in the papers, Clay,” he said. Despite his name, Bull Rocco is a New Look union boy, complete with tie and clean shirt. “That was a pity.”

“It sure was,” I said. “You know anybody named Cy Grildquist?”

“Sure,” he said. “He’s got a play on Broadway right now.
A Sound of Distant Drums.
A good money-maker.”

“I’m glad to hear it. I’m always happy to see the arts prosper.”

“You and me both, boy. What about Grildquist?”

“Can you do any checking on him for me? Have you got anybody relatively close to him?”

“In the theater, yes. But not at home. Unless maybe his chauffeur. I don’t know, I’ll have to check on that.”

“Well, here’s what I want to know. Where was he yesterday afternoon, particularly around four o’clock. What’s his relationship with Mavis St. Paul recently, and does his ex-wife fit into the picture at all.”

“Which wife? He’s been married three times.”

“Oh, Christ. The one he was married to four, five years ago. I’d also like to know where
she
was yesterday afternoon.”

“I can’t promise anything, Clay. Particularly with the wife. I might not know anybody who knows her. But I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks, Bull.”

I hung up and checked names off my list. There were only two people left to cover, Ernest Tesselman and the husband from Illinois.

I wasn’t sure whether I liked the idea of the husband from Illinois or not. Apparently, he and Mavis hadn’t seen each other for five years at the very least. For him to all of a sudden come out of the past and kill her just didn’t make too much sense.

On the other hand, there might be more to Mavis St. Paul’s marriage than I knew about yet. And the first thing to do was to find out who Mavis St. Paul had been married to. Which meant I had to get in touch with somebody who was in touch with Belleville, Illinois.

Now, where the hell was Belleville, Illinois?

The way I figure it, if you want to find a small town, you find out what big town is near it. And when I think of Illinois, the big town I think of is Chicago.

So I wasted a long-distance phone call, to a guy I know in Chicago, who while not in Ed Ganolese’s organization is in a somewhat similar organization with some of the same people on the board of directors.

“Belleville?” he repeated. “That’s way the hell down-state, Clay. That isn’t our territory at all.”

“Fine,” I said. “It isn’t near Chicago.”

“Hell no.”