The Fatal Frails (3 page)

“Why does there always seem to be something you forget?”

“Cynicism ill becomes you, boy. We got a deal?” Silently Rogers took his notebook from his pocket and flipped pages. He stared off down the corridor as Johnny squinted at the opened page. “Spandau Watch Company,” Johnny murmured. “Room Eighteen-oh-eight, Two-twenty-two Maiden Lane.” His grin renewed itself. “Nine will get you five an’ your nine back, Jimmy, that the gal’s no maiden.”

“You shock me.” The notebook closed with a snap. “So what did I buy?”

Johnny ran through for him quickly Claude Dechant’s reaction to the one letter in the stack of mail. “When he came in that front door I’ll bet he didn’t have any more idea of jumpin’ overboard than you do right now. He didn’t get any phone calls, either. Was I you, I’d take a look for that letter.”

Rogers nodded grudgingly. “We’ll look. Not that it’ll make any difference.” He looked at Johnny. “What’d you do to the man last night to get him up on his ear?”

“He’s just a bleedin’ heart. We was still speakin’ when I left here. He must’ve had a bad dream.”

“If he did, you were in it, in Technicolor. As a direct result of which, I’m taking an official interest in you.”

“Official, Jimmy?”

Detective Rogers paused as though mentally reviewing his orders. “Perhaps not official,” he conceded. “But an interest.”

‘ “Should I move a spare cot into my room for you?”

“Never mind trying to be a bigger wise guy than nature made you, either.”

“The redhead an’ the lawyer showed yet?”

“Left twenty minutes ago,” Rogers announced with satisfaction.

Johnny glanced up and down the bustling corridor. “Where’s your crabby partner, Cuneo? Already out on the corner waitin’ for me to leave so he can tail me?”

The sandy-haired man eyed Johnny coldly. “My partner’s minding his own business, which is more than I can say for some people I know.” Detective Ted Cuneo, who had a phobia about Johnny Killain, was a sallow-faced six-footer with large-pupiled pop eyes.

“You guys are as transparent as glass, Jimmy.”

“You’re not so damn opaque yourself.”

“Clear-As-Crystal Killain, they call me,” Johnny agreed. “I guess I should sign that statement now. I wouldn’t want Ted to get chilled standin’ around waitin’ for me.”

He moved up the corridor, ignoring Rogers’ stare.

• • •

Johnny had covered the best part of three blocks outside, and had just begun to think himself mistaken about Ted Cuneo’s activities, when he suddenly picked out the tall detective’s lean figure across the street. Johnny stopped and waved. “Hey, Cuneo! Come on over!” Detective Cuneo crossed the street after an irresolute moment. He stepped up on the curb and looked Johnny up and down balefully. Two bright red spots bloomed in the saffron features. “How about splittin’ the cab fare downtown?” Johnny asked him. “I like to keep down expenses.”

“Wise guy,” the tall man gritted. “A continental wise guy.”

“No originality,” Johnny said sadly. “Rogers already used up that line. Well, you comin’?”

“I’ll just call that bluff,” the detective decided after a moment’s debate with himself. Johnny lifted his arm to a cab that darted into the curb.

“Two-twenty-two Maiden Lane,” Johnny told the driver as he preceded Cuneo into the back seat.

The tall man jerked to a stop halfway in. “Where’d you get that address?” he demanded.

“From the lawyer, Faulkner,” Johnny said innocently. “Why? You guys forget to muzzle him?”

Cuneo pulled himself in the balance of the way. He sat in compressed-lip silence the entire trip. In the lobby of the office building he watched, his mouth a thin, hard line, as Johnny gravely ran a finger down the “S’s” on the wall directory. “Spandau,” Johnny said aloud. “Eighteen-oh-eight.”

“And just what do you think you’re going to do up there?” Cuneo’s voice was acid-tipped, but Johnny thought he detected a note of uneasiness in it, too.

“Who the hell knows?” Johnny responded. “I play these things better by ear. You still aboard? Let’s go.” Cuneo followed stubbornly to the elevators, but hesitated just outside as Johnny stepped on. Johnny needled him. “Come on, man. You think I got time to wait while you thumb through the manual lookin’ for a paragraph to cover you? The man said report, didn’t he? How the hell ‘re you gonna report if you’re not with me?”

Ted Cuneo burst onto the elevator as though goosed from behind. The large-pupiled eyes were narrowed to slits. “Goddam you, Killain, I’ll—”

“Temper, temper,” Johnny said soothingly. To himself he thought that about one more jab of the spurs and Detective Cuneo would be out of the saddle completely on this trip.

Johnny was interested to note, beneath the block-lettered
Spandau Watch Co
. on the frosted glass of 1808, a smaller j
. Trenmaine, Representative
. J. Tremaine. The “Jack” of Dechant’s phone calls? Or the “Jules”? Johnny tapped once and entered, with the now obviously reluctant Cuneo still tagging doggedly along.

The redhead from the previous evening looked up inquiringly from behind a neat, small desk. The room was small, too, and a little on the shabby side, Johnny thought. The girl was alone, but the door to an inner office was at her back. Johnny was relieved to discover that he had made no mistake in judgment last night. Even in the less flattering daylight, this was an exceptional specimen of the genus female.

“May I help you, gentlemen?” the girl asked as Cuneo remained a discreet half pace behind Johnny.

“Sure you can, Gloria,” Johnny told her. He leaned down over her desk, resting his weight on his big-knuckled hands. Gloria Philips glanced fleetingly at the hands, longer at the breadth of chest and shoulders above them, longer still at the rough-hewn, craggy features thirty-six inches from her own. “Tremaine around?”

“Who wishes—” The rehead nodded to herself. “I place you now. You were in the room last night when we found Claude.” She inspected Johnny coolly from beneath long lashes. “You have business with Mr. Tremaine?”

“Oh, boy, do I have business!” Johnny replied cheerfully.

Her eyes slid off to Cuneo. “And this one?”

“Oh, he’s just a cop,” Johnny said disparagingly. “Just taggin’ along. I can’t get rid of him.”

“A policeman? Really?” Gloria Philips’ stare banked off the red-faced Cuneo back to Johnny. “Mr. Tremaine is unavailable right now. If you could give me some idea of the nature of your business … I’m Mr. Tremaine’s secretary.”

“Well, I guess if you’re his secretary it’s all right,” Johnny allowed grudgingly. “I come over here to blackmail him.” Beside Johnny, Detective Cuneo blanched.

“You’re joking, of course,” the girl said finally.

“Jokin’?” Johnny repeated. “I been livin’ in Claude Dechant’s pocket for ten years, little sister. You don’t think that qualifies me?”

The redhead considered this for five seconds before her fascinated stare returned to Cuneo. “And in the presence of the police you mention blackmail of Mr. Tremaine?”

Ted Cuneo emitted a strangled sound. His hand opened and closed at his sides. “Where’s a phone?” he blared. “Where’s a goddam phone? Not that thing!” he shouted hoarsely at Gloria Philips as she pushed the phone on her desk toward him. “A pay phone!”

“None closer than the lobby, I’m afraid,” she told him.

He whirled to the door. From its threshold he leveled a finger at Johnny. “I’ll get you for this, you sonofabitch! If Dameron just gives me the word, I’ll—” He growled inarticulately, and the door shivered from the force with which he slammed it.

Gloria Philips was looking up at Johnny pensively when he turned back to her desk. “A man like you hasn’t always worked in a hotel, has he?” she asked.

She’s stalling, he thought instantly. Her hands were motionless on the desk top. Buzzer under her foot, probably. Act II was due to be coming up any second now. He moved a casual step closer to her desk. “Worked? Hell, I worked at everything. I was rollin’ furniture vans over the mountains between L.A. an’ Houston before I was eighteen. Jimmy-diesels. Monsters. Load a mansion in one. We did, many a time. Like the time I moved the whorehouse into Silver City. Rainin’ like the sun’d gone out of style, an’—”

The door behind Gloria Philips was flung open, and a big man charged through it with so much energy that Johnny wondered why he had bothered to turn the knob. “What is it, Gloria?” the man demanded. He had a heavy, good-looking head set squarely on solid shoulders.

The redhead released a spatter of rapid-fire French. “This maniac speaks of blackmail, Jules. He was here with another whom he said was of the police and who has now gone to telephone. I don’t understand the relationship; they were unfriendly, but the other truly looked of the police. This one works at the hotel where Claude died. Perhaps there is—”

Johnny leaned down over her desk again and knuckle-rapped it sharply for attention.
“Un de ces jours tu prendras mon cul pour une tasse du café,”
he said energetically. “Maybe today, eh? Why guess, when I’d be happy to tell you?”

Jules Tremaine flexed his arms and advanced deliberately from his open doorway around the end of the girl’s desk. “Jules,” Gloria Philips said quietly. “Look at the neck.”

The big man looked. He didn’t appear alarmed, but he halted, a thoughtful look on his handsome face.

“Thank the lady for doin’ you a big favor, Jules,” Johnny said softly, coming down off the balls of his feet.

Jules Tremaine looked him up and down impersonally, then jerked his head at the doorway behind him. “Inside,” he said curtly. “We can talk in there.”

“That’s the specific idea,” Johnny told him. He looked down at Gloria Philips. “You, too, little sister. I like you near me.”

He followed them into the inner office.

J
ULES TREMAINE PUSHED A STACK
of papers from a corner of his high-piled desk and settled himself upon it, a leg swinging negligently and the big body at ease. “Sit there,” he directed, and nodded at a chair that would have placed him between Johnny and the door. He paid no attention at all to Gloria Philips, who had seated herself unobtrusively in the farthest corner.

“I’m doin’ fine right here,” Johnny returned equably from where he stood, just inside the door.

Dark, wide-spaced eyes beneath heavy lids examined Johnny carefully. The jet black hair had a thick wave in it, and the smooth, olive features tapered to a square jaw. This man must have broken a thousand hearts, Johnny decided, but he was no pretty-boy. Tremaine’s manner, as well as the blunt-fingered, capable-looking hands, contributed to an overall impression of rugged competence.

“Now let’s get—” Tremaine checked himself. “Who are you?”

“The name’s Killain. Johnny.” He nodded at the redhead in her corner. “Shouldn’t we stuff little sister’s ears before we begin? I wanted her here to keep her off the phone.”

“You can talk.”

“Suit yourself,” Johnny shrugged. “I got something to sell, Tremaine. It takes a bankroll to buy. Dechant furnished the merchandise. You interested?”

Heavy-lidded eyes, beneath straight black brows, stared unwinkingly into Johnny’s. “In the first place, I don’t believe you.”

Johnny swept a hand in a leisurely semicircle around the disorder of the shabby office. “You don’t look to me like you got enough firepower financially, what I see here,” he said critically. “I need a real money tree. If you can’t weigh in heavy enough, it’d be real cozy if you’d steer me to whichever of the others figured to shower down the most. I wouldn’t forget it.”

“The others?” Tremaine’s tone was sharp.

“Sure. Max, maybe. Jack, or Harry. Madeleine, even. For the right steer I could make you a deal.”

“Send him to Stitt,” the redhead said rapidly in Italian from her corner. “With the trouble over the symbols—”

“Shut up!” Jules Tremaine’s hard voice rapped tightly on the heels of hers, but he didn’t turn to look at her. “He speaks French. Why not Italian?” The heavy-lidded eyes measured Johnny. “I think he knows nothing. He fishes in troubled waters.”

“Trouble’s the word, chum,” Johnny said in his most reasonable tone. “Since we know there’s goin’ to be some, I’m in favor of makin’ a dollar on the prospect. Whose side are you on? The people with the money, or Tremaine’s?” He reached behind him for the doorknob at the other’s silence. “The hell with it. I don’t like doin’ business with people who can’t make up their mind. I’ll go it alone.”

“Jules!” Gloria Philips exclaimed as Johnny opened the door.

“Shut up,” the big man repeated, but not as positively as before. Johnny closed the door from the other side and walked through the outer office. He was surprised that he hadn’t been called back by the time the elevator he had summoned stopped at the eighteenth floor. Tremaine either had good nerves or was slow on the uptake. Not that it mattered—there was an easy way to copper the bet.

In the lobby he went straight to the phone booth. He found fourteen Stitts in the directory. One John, who could be Jack, and one Max. Johnny scribbled phone numbers and addresses on the back of a matchbook cover. On second thought, he went back to the directory and tried Stit, with one “t.” Only three, and no Jack, John or Max.

He referred to the directory for the third time, fished a dime from the change in his pocket and dialed the number of the Spandau Watch Co. He listened appreciatively to Gloria Philips’ cool voice at the other end of the line. “‘Bout time for your coffee break, isn’t it, little sister?” he asked her in Italian.

He could hear the perceptible intake of her breath. “I’m—sorry I’m late. We’ve been busy. I’ll be right down.”

Nice to find someone with a normal quota of curiosity, Johnny thought. He strolled back to the bank of elevators to wait for her. He had a smile on his face for Gloria Philips when she stepped out into the lobby. She looked at him, a long, speculative look, and then without a word steered him to the coffee-shop door on the left and on through the cafeteria-style aisle.

En route to a corner table behind her, with their coffees on a tray, he noted that her suit—blue, today—enhanced her ripened curves commendably. Even in daylight, the rich auburn hair had a remarkable sheen.

“I can’t understand why I feel you’re not a fool,” she commented at the table as he unloaded the tray. Her glance ranged over him guardedly. “The way you blundered in upstairs was nothing short of idiotic, but—”

Her eyes at close range were a chameleonlike blue-gray, Johnny decided, and the tiny freckles even more attractive than he had remembered. “No sugar, thanks,” she said. She picked up her cup and sipped at it, her eyes still upon him above the rim. “You could be a fool, I suppose,” she remarked as she set the cup down. “But I think I like you, anyway.” She smiled at him.

Johnny felt his interest rising by the moment. When this girl smiled, the lights dimmed. “What’s a looker like you doin’ workin’ for Tremaine?” he asked her bluntly.

The smile was as cool as the voice. “I could find you a thousand girls—” she glanced at the square-cut watch on her plump wrist—”between now and lunch time who’d love to work for Jules.”

“So he’s a doll. You’re not moonstruck. You reacted upstairs faster than he did.” He reached across the table to take her wrist in his hand for a better look at the watch, and small diamonds winked in the light. “About fifteen, eighteen hundred,” Johnny estimated. “If these go with the job, I take back what I said.” He released her wrist, although she had made no move to withdraw it. He must be getting old, he decided. He hadn’t felt skin like that in years. “You think I should see Stitt?”

“I really don’t know you well enough to advise you, Mr. Killain.” Her smile was brilliant.

“Save the candlepower, kid. This is business. An’ the name’s Johnny. As for not knowin’ me, we could fix that. I’d promise to enjoy it.” He studied her a moment. “Why do you figure Dechant killed himself?”

“Don’t you mean why did he kill himself just now?” she answered, and moved right on. “Don’t underestimate Jules. You’ll hear from him, when he’s had time to think it over. He’ll tell you to go to Madeleine. He hates her. He’d like to see her in trouble.”

“But you hate Stitt,” Johnny suggested. “You’d like to see him in trouble.”

The long-lashed eyelids lowered, then swept upward again in a dazzling display. “Claude told you about customs finding out about the symbols not being re-marked?” she asked.

“First I’ve heard of it,” Johnny said. “Outside of the crack you made upstairs.”

“It’s well for my faith in you that you answered that way,” she continued. “Claude didn’t know it himself, being just off the plane. That’s why Ernest and I were there, to tell him.” A coral-tinted fingernail tapped idly on her coffee cup. “You’re serious about having something to sell?”

“I’ve got it,” Johnny assured her. “Like to get on the bandwagon? You just aim me at the moneybelt. To nail it down for you a little, I spent some time in Italy some time back. Like Claude Dechant. I won’t have any trouble sellin’. I just want the best price. Is Stitt the man?”

“Max doesn’t respond to pressure,” she said slowly. This time Johnny thought her smile was rueful. “I speak from experience.”

Johnny lit two cigarettes, handed her one and sneaked a look at his matchbook cover. “Look, I can’t sit still. Stitt will be at the warehouse, I suppose.”

“Usually.” Her tone was absent. She picked a shred of tobacco from a full lower lip, the blue-gray eyes still studying him. Abruptly she made up her mind. “Forget what I said about Max. Go after Jack. He’ll be there, too, this time of day. Jack’s the man with the money.”

“You’re telling me this because you love me.”

The beautiful face was serene. “I’m telling you because, if you make it to the payoff window, I’d like to be in line for a share. And Jack has the money.” She made an impatient gesture at Johnny’s careful inspection of her. “All right, I dislike Max Stitt. If it was just a question of getting him punched in the nose, I’d cheerfully let you go over there looking for him. If there’s real money involved, though, Jack’s the man with something to lose.” She smiled. “None of them has the right time for me. If you score, remember the source.”

“You can believe it, little sister.” He was watching her face. “You don’t like Jack, either?”

“Jack’s a fat slug,” she replied indifferently. “I could learn to like his money with no trouble at all.”

“That’s my kind of jazz you’re playin’ now,” Johnny said approvingly. He leaned in closer over the table. “How about dinner tonight to set up the articles of war?” He eyed the golden haze of freckles on the white skin. “You freckled all over like that, kid?”

“Not all over, Johnny.” Her gaze was level and self-possessed. “I think I’d enjoy having dinner with you.”

“Fine. Pick you up here at five?”

“I’ll be looking forward to it.” She stood up, pushing back her chair, smiled at him again and walked away. Johnny sat and watched her walk toward the elevator until she disappeared into it.

A lovely little playmate, he decided. Lovely. And dangerous.

• • •

Johnny alighted from the cab in front of the three-story brick building of the Empire Freight Forwarding Corporation. Waiting for the driver to make change, he noticed that the place had the indefinable air of decrepitude even the newest warehouses speedily acquire. He wondered if the redhead had felt it necessary to make a phone call to anyone announcing his imminent arrival. He’d soon know, and the knowledge among other things would set the tone for his dinner date with Miss Gloria Philips.

He strode up a narrow cement walk between ten-foot-high, heavy-duty wire fences laced at the top with projecting strands of ugly-looking barbed wire. Ignoring the door marked
office
, he moved forty feet down the building to an unmarked one.

The high whine of a motor assailed Johnny’s ears at his entrance. A man in a woolen shirt, with a baling hook thrust through his belt, looked down at him inquiringly from the cab of a rubber-tired fork-lift truck stacking crates against a wall. Johnny could see, stenciled on the crates in bold black, the letters
CBA
1448
on
10, and directly beneath it
via Akama Maru, Yokohama, Japan
. In the background a series of crashes and bangs added to the dissonant symphony of noise. The volume of sound was unbelievable.

“I’m lookin’ for Max.” Johnny had to yell it twice, and even thought the man on the truck must be reading his lips.

“Office, I think,” the man shouted down above the bedlam, and reached for a lever to elevate the crate checked on the lift at Johnny’s entrance.

Johnny raised an arm to stay him. “Jack around?”

“Mr. Arends? He was in earlier,” the man roared down powerfully. “If the blue Caddie’s still in the parkin’ lot, he’s around somewheres.”

“Thanks,” Johnny mouthed, not expecting to be heard. He backed to the door. On the floor a crate with three broken slats was marked
Amsterdam, Netherlands
, and against the other wall a neat pile of heavy-looking boxes were labeled
Oberon on, Suisse
. It figured, Johnny thought as he closed the door. Dechant was an importer. Somebody had to get the stuff over here for him.

The parking lot disclosed the tail fins of a blue Cadillac projecting six feet beyond everything else. Johnny looked at it on his way to the door marked
office
. He hadn’t wanted to ask Gloria Philips a direct question. There were a lot of “Jacks” in the world, perhaps several in this building, but a Jack Arends with a big blue Cadillac looked promising.

Inside, Johnny looked from a mousy receptionist behind a low wooden railing to a man half hidden by an old-fashioned roll-top desk. “I’d like to see Max Stitt, miss,” he told the girl.

“It may take a few moments,” she said pleasantly. “I’ll see if I can locate him for you.” She flipped a switch on the intercom on her desk. She tried a station, and another, and another. As her voice continued patiently to page Max Stitt the man behind the desk first raised his head, then pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. He waddled toward Johnny, hand extended. “Never like to keep a potential customer waiting,” he said jovially. “Anything I can do for you until Helen finds Max? I’m Jack Arends,” he added as an afterthought. “Max lets me sign a few papers around here.” He chuckled deeply.

Arends was short and almost grossly fat. He wasn’t young, but the overlarge head surmounting the squat body was capped with surprisingly youthful dark hair. His nose and mouth would have been grotesque on a face less strong, Johnny felt. The lips were unattractively thick, but creased in a genial grin. Above the blob of a body his huge head suggested a nervous lion.

“Killain,” Johnny said, taking the hand briefly. “Dechant sent me over.”

Jack Arends’ geniality vanished as though it had never been. “Where you gettin’ your messages from these days?” he growled.

“Before he did the samurai bit,” Johnny explained. “He said if anything happened I should look up Stitt.”

“Yeah?” The fat man pulled at a pendulous lower lip. “Why?” His shrewd little eyes, embedded in puffy rolls of fat, were warily apprehensive.

“I’ll tell that to Stitt. It’s not about the symbol markings.”

Jack Arends appeared to swell internally. “Who the hell are you? Does every sonofabitch in this town know my business?” He rushed right on without waiting for a reply. “Let me tell you something, Mr. Whatever-your-name-is, I’ll bust—” He whirled on short legs at the sound of a closing door to confront an alert-looking, ramrod-straight man walking toward them. “Max!” Jack Arends’ voice soared nearly to a screech. “Did you have some kind of a deal going with Dechant? Just because you grew up in the same town with that thief—”

“What the hell are you yapping about, Jack?” A thinly veiled note of contempt edged Max Stitt’s hard tone. He was tall and solidly lean, with a pale face and a jutting hawk’s nose beneath a pepper-and-salt crewcut. Johnny judged him to be about forty-five. His eyes were almost completely colorless, making them the coldest-looking Johnny had ever seen. Stitt was wearing a short leather jacket with a pushed-back, fleece-lined hood, heavy stagged-top trousers and bronze-toecapped boots.