Armchair in Hell (Prologue Books) Read online

  “Doc in?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I went in, with my bags.

  Doc said, “Hello, Chambers.”

  “Stick these into a closet, will you, Doc?”

  “What are they?”

  “Suitcases.”

  “Oh.”

  He took two and I took two and we piled them into a closet amongst ladies’ shoes and mules with fringes and slender shoe trees. “My wife’s closet,” Doc said. “She’s in Florida.”

  “Business must be good.”

  “Good enough.”

  “Thanks, Doc. I’ll be seeing you.”

  “Where’d you get the patch?” he said, thinly, professionally jealous.

  “In a hospital.”

  “Oh.”

  “Emergency.”

  “That’s different.”

  “Bye, Doc. Thanks. I’ll see you.”

  I went back upstairs and I shut Viggy’s bottomless satchel and I strapped it and I went out. I walked across to Third Avenue where, practically every other block, they were razing and they were building.

  I caught up with a night watchman. “How do you do? Do you have sand?”

  “Eh?” he said, and straightened his hand behind his ear.

  Trust Chambers to waylay a deaf watchman.

  “Sand. For the satchel.”

  “That’s right. That’s what I thought you said.”

  “That’s what I need. Sand for the satchel.”

  He backed away. He looked at me. He looked at the satchel. He pointed at it. I nodded.

  He said, “Come on, sonny,” and he led me across the planks under a scaffolding to where the sand pile was with a shovel. “Help yourself. What do you need it for? In the satchel.”

  “I’m building a house. A small one.”

  He didn’t hear me and it didn’t matter.

  I shoveled sand into the satchel and patted it and then I saw a brick and I tossed it in. A brick in a false-stuffed suitcase is fitting, like the dollar to the bellboy when the lady is not your wife.

  I filled it and I strapped it and I locked it and I threw the key into the sand pile and I said, “Thanks,” and I walked the planks back to the sidewalk and now Viggy’s Gladstone felt familiar; one side of me sagged and my arm was parting company with its socket.

  I stopped and I called Madeline Howell.

  She wasn’t in.

  A cab took me to Fiftieth Street between Broadway and Eighth and I checked the bag with the Greyhound Bus Lines.

  I wasn’t far from the Utopia.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I went up the narrow stairs and I knocked on OFFICE UTOPIA.

  “Who knocks?”

  “Pete Chambers.”

  “What the hell is this?” Denny shouted. “Vaudeville patter?”

  Denny in gray plaid and a sober black tie, big and erect behind his desk, with an open bottle of Vat 69 and a tumbler.

  “Solitary,” I said, “for Scotch. You don’t have a jane in the wastepaper basket, hiding out?”

  “Nerves.”

  “Why?”

  “Trying to run a dance hall with guys like you chopping up routine.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “First we have a drink.” He came out from behind the desk, long as a check at the Stork, but wider, and he opened a cabinet and got a glass and poured.

  I had a large drink of Scotch and I loved it.

  “What’s with chopped routine?”

  “With chopped routine, it’s Mona Crawford. She said she was sick so I let her go. Later, I heard different.”

  “Oh, that.”

  “That.”

  I gave him my glass and I looked at it and he poured again and I had another large drink of Scotch and I loved it. I returned the glass. “Look, you’re being a nice boy and free with your whisky, so I’ll give you a tip. With chopped routine and Mona, you are liable to have your joint shot up one evening. Your Mona has a sweetheart and a boy friend. I don’t know about the boy friend but the sweetheart is a guy called the Little Guy.”

  “I know him. So what?”

  “So that smells trouble.”

  “How does Mona smell?”

  “Mona smells like tramp.”

  He swung. I ducked. I heard it whistle over me.

  I brought up my head and I looked at him. “I think you meant that, and I’m sort of tired of ducking. So don’t do it again. You’re big, but I’m in the business. Run your dance hall.”

  He poured into both glasses; he gave me mine and he held his out. We clinked.

  He closed one eye at me. “I’ve probably had a drop too much for accuracy, and I’m glad or we’d be peeling ourselves off the walls. All right, I’m sorry. I don’t like people calling my kids names.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she isn’t a tramp.”

  He went back behind the desk and he put his feet up. He reached for the bottle, then he snapped his fingers and he sat back. “Oh. I’ve got a message for you.”

  “You’ve got one thousand messages for me. All green.”

  “Not now. Next week. I’ve got that thou’ out working for me.”

  I shook my head, discouraged. “I come for money and I get a message. Who wants me?”

  “Fat the Butcher.”

  “Why?”

  “How would I know?”

  “Why would you have the message?”

  “He’s been dropping messages around like pigeons drop stuff in the park. All over. He’s tried to get you at your office and he’s tried to get you at home.”

  “Fat the Butcher,” I said. “Probably jammed up with another redhead. I’m busy. If you see him, tell him I’ll be in touch with him. When I have time.”

  “I’ll see him tonight. I’m taking the night off. I feel lucky.”

  “With my thousand?”

  “Have a drink.” He pointed at the bottle.

  I had a drink. “Viggy doesn’t like it.”

  “What?”

  “He doesn’t like you as a patron.”

  “Why? Because I get in on an oakley?”

  “Because he thinks you’re a lousy gambler.”

  “The hell with him.”

  “The hell with you. I’m going. I’m not coming back here for my thousand. Drop it at the office or bring it up to the apartment.”

  “I wouldn’t know where you live.”

  “It’s in the phone book.”

  Phone book. I said, “Excuse me,” and I sat on the desk and dialed Madeline Howell’s number.

  Madeline was in.

  “It’s Pete,” I said. “Wait for me. I’m coming over.” I hung up. “Good-by, Denny. Thanks for the Scotch.”

  I went to the depot and retrieved the bag from Greyhound.

  2

  She opened the door and she looked at the suitcase.

  “Well,” she said. “Victory.”

  “Pyrrhic.”

  “Don’t get dirty.”

  “Pyrrhic victory.”

  “Oh. I thought you were calling me a name. I don’t understand.”

  I set down the bag and I took off my hat and coat. She came up and she kissed me like it was a duty, and immediately

  she crouched and tried to open the bag. I let her. She opened the straps and she pried at the locks with her fingernails.

  “Damn.”

  “Curious?”

  “That I am.”

  “You don’t know what’s in it?” I suggested. “Right you are, bucko.”

  “How do you like that?”

  She sat on a corner of the bag and she pulled her knees together and she turned on the glow for me. “How’d you do it, detective?”

  “Now, now. I don’t ask you about stool pigeons for the column. Now, do I?”

  “And where’d you get the face?”

  “How do I look?”

  “Good. Better, in fact. Dashing. A patch and a gentle bruise, it does something to a good-looking lad. A woman likes that. How’s about it?”
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  She went, smilingly, to the day bed and patted a pillow.

  “You’re kidding,” I said.

  “Try me.”

  I sat down in the barrel chair. “About the Pyrrhic victory….”

  “Yeh,” she said. “The Pyrrhic victory.”

  “You’re not getting the bag.”

  “Aren’t I?”

  “Correct.”

  She set a cigarette going and she sat on the couch and she crossed her legs, high. “Honeychile, you have a license issued by the Secretary of State and you have posted a ten-thousand-dollar bond. Did you ever eat a license and a ten-thousand-dollar bond?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Whet your appetite. I paid you a thousand dollars to do a job and you’ve gone and done it. That terminates it. Don’t misunderstand me; I can like a chap very much, but business is business. I can also kick a chap in the slats, if he’s looking for it.”

  I looked at her legs. “Madeline, I like you too. Which is why you don’t get the bag. Will you kindly listen before I start chewing licenses and expensive bonds?”

  “I’m always willing to listen.”

  “I don’t know whether you know what I’m going to tell you or whether you don’t. If you do, then you’ll know that I know too. If you don’t, then you’ll understand why I don’t want you to have the bag.”

  She bent over and she smothered her cigarette in a jade ash tray on an end table. “Right, bo. You’ve written your lead. Now go into the story.”

  I sighed for her. Big. I rolled around in the barrel chair until I got comfortable. “I know J.J.O’S. The guy that owns the bag. It was stolen from him. There are three dead people mixed up with it. Murdered. Also some very hard gazabos, very much alive and very anxious. This thing could turn very messy. I wouldn’t like you to be left with the short end of the stick.”

  “Jesus breezes,” she murmured.

  But she didn’t talk. Madeline Howell, crisscrossed in nylons, musing with the tip of an arched pinkie in the corner of her mouth; smiling but not happy under her golden side-saddle hair-fix. Suddenly, and stupidly, the hammers got going in my stomach.

  She stood up, her elbows back, her arms graceful at her sides. “Suppose we eat. Do you have the time?”

  “Thanks. Yes. Please.”

  She went away and I smoked cigarettes and I marched the carpet and I kicked at chairs lightly and occasionally and I played with my mustache and I had a drink or two from the tall mahogany cabinet. She came back, rolling a wide serving table, and the hamburgers were thick and bulbous and the potatoes were julienne and there were catchup and beer and sliced onions and open biscuits yellow with butter — but I looked at Madeline and not at the food, and I wondered about that.

  For me, that’s something.

  She had changed into a hostess gown, dusty rose and gold, with puff-shoulder sleeves and a tight gold sequin belt. It opened down from the middle in a long, narrow, artful, inverted V, a peekaboo slit with flashes of smooth-sculptured leg — knee up and knee down — and flashes of absolutely nothing else, but absolutely; it kept you off balance, you wouldn’t think it possible.

  But it wasn’t the gown.

  The hammers had started before the gown.

  Did I say something somewhere about a preference for ladies more corporeal, larger and less studied?

  That’s what I thought….

  3

  Then I pointed at my wrist watch and I said, “Look at the time.”

  “What about it?”

  “I’m a working man.”

  “Hear.”

  “The hell with that. Do you talk or do you clam?”

  “I clam. If it means what I think it means.”

  “You want your thousand back?”

  “No.”

  Then I had an idea. “Suppose I get the guy that owns the bag. Maybe there’s something I’m not supposed to know about this setup. Suppose I have him come up here and have a talk with you. Maybe you two ought to sort of go into conference. Or, maybe, after he talks with you, you’ll be convinced to pull your nose out of it and take back your thousand bucks; because I’m hoping it’s a story you smelled out somewhere, and you sent me out on it like a leg man.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “Well?”

  “Get your guy, if you like. I’m interested.”

  I got up and I went to the telephone and I called Viggy’s. Viggy wasn’t there. I talked to Fat the Butcher.

  “Where the hell you been?” he said.

  “Where’s Viggy?”

  “I can’t talk over the phone. I want you to come the hell up here.”

  “You do?”

  “Cut the stuff. Viggy’s jammed. It’s important.”

  “Oh.”

  “Where the hell you been for two days?”

  “Vacationing. If that’s all right with you.”

  “Cut it,” I said. “He’s jammed. Cops.”

  “So that’s the way it shapes.” I brought the receiver up and I smoothed at my hair. Then I brought it down. “Well, you’re right and I’m wrong. I’m dumb. I’ll be right up there.”

  I hung up.

  I went back to Madeline Howell. She kissed me on the

  forehead and I kissed her on the forehead. Then I lifted her and I held her and I kissed her on the mouth, good.

  “I really hope you’re not mixed up with this,” I said. “I can kick people in the slats, too. I mean people I like.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “All right.” I patted the bag. “I hear it’s supposed to be valuable. Stay with it. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Viggy’s big-time gambling hole is on Eighty-second Street and Park Avenue.

  I pushed the pearl button and I waved at the mirror and Tutti opened the door and he said, “Good evening, Mr. Chambers,” in the select, awed voice that he reserved for everybody, and everybody thinks he’s a secret glamour boy, exclusive and expensive.

  I checked my hat and coat and I smiled at the smooth-jawed boys and I said, “First floor,” to the elevator man.

  The room was full of people.

  I slid along the sides to the bar, and I was very much interested, because I saw Pierre Vyseuseau going with the horse-smile for a ponderous lady with bosom, and, not too far removed, Detective Lieutenant Parker, alone and sullen with a highball, and, across the bar from the detective lieutenant — Dolores Castle.

  I headed for Dolores.

  Dolores Castle was Viggy’s very latest special; a new employee at the club. I had seen Dolores just once before, she had been pointed out to me, but I had never met her, formally — leave that to Viggy. She did a few throaty torch numbers (when she had the time) and she did them exquisitely (I’d been told); a tall high-shouldered scintillant upswept blonde, cute as a dimple, button-nosed with etched nostrils and a bright mouth and delicate hollows under her cheekbones; statuesque, Junoesque, burlesque, but gorgeous.

  I crawled up on the high stool behind her and the Mexican bartender whose name, believe me, was Pancho, looked up and said, ”Ai, it is a pleasure and glad to see you,” and I said, very funny, ”Agua, with rye on the side,” and then I touched her, two fingers on a lovely shoulder and she turned, three-quarters,

  one eyebrow up, and she said, ladylike and golden-voiced:

  “Brush, guy.”

  “Brush?”

  “Blow. Hoop with the roll. Powder. Like Seidlitz.”

  “Powder?” I said. “Like Seidlitz?”

  She turned her back on me.

  That wasn’t bad either.

  Her dress was no dress at all down to the hips, smooth as pitchman’s patter.

  In the monotone of a little girl reciting for company after the coaxing and the curtsy, I said, “My name is Peter Chambers and I thought yours might be Dolores Castle.” Cute; like the lady in the midriff, trying hard, but ahead of herself in the family way.

  She swung around on the stool, smiling with the
teeth, and her blue eyes sprinkled lights like a kid’s sparkler on the Fourth of July.

  “Peter Chambers?”

  “Me.”

  “Oh.” Giggle. “I’m sorry I was rude.”

  “Sure.”

  “You know how it is.”

  “Sure, I know how it is.”

  “The characters have a drink and then they make like wolves.”

  “Sure.”

  “That wasn’t ad lib. That was line. I really don’t talk that way.”

  “You telling me?”

  “I’m dreadfully sorry.”

  Pancho interrupted with rye and water.

  “Drinkie?” Cute Chambers, like the lady with the midriff.

  She had a voice that sort of reached in and put a hand on your heart, like a gypsy’s fiddle when you are young and the night has stars. “I’d love to, but I can’t, really. I go on in a very few minutes. How is it, Mr. Chambers, that we’ve never met? I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  “You figure it out.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Skip it.”

  I poured in the rye and I followed it with water and I tapped

  the little glass against the shining counter and Pancho flung his happy Mexican personality about and looked at Miss Castle and he opened his black eyes at me and all of his face smiled around his large, level teeth. He filled the little glass. I drank it.

  I took her hand in both of mine. “Call me Pete. I mean call me Pete when you call me sometime. I mean it’s in the phone book.” I was really rolling good tonight. Like a humpbacked train on the living-room floor with the tracks put together, but bent.

  Then she laughed and it was beautiful; she laughed and I loved it and a look crept into her eyes that puts perfection to an evening with smoke on the ceiling and a happy bartender and soft, dreamy licks from an orchestra on a black velvet dais — if you don’t have things on your mind.

  “Now I understand.” Her hand in both of mine wriggled delightfully. “Oh, that Viggy. And oh, oh, oh, how well he knows his friends….”

  The music stopped and the clatter of announcement rolled off the drums and the man in tails held the microphone lovingly and told the people about the beauteous Dolores Castle, who was coming on now to knock them dead.