Armchair in Hell (Prologue Books) Read online

  “Got to go to work,” she whispered. “Please don’t go away.” Pause. “Pete.”

  The way she said “Pete” — the empty little glass went bang on the counter for Pancho.

  2

  Detective Lieutenant Parker amply filled the seat that she had vacated, amply and overlappingly.

  “Rye,” he said to Pancho. “How is it, Pete?”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Haven’t seen you around.”

  “Haven’t been around.”

  Detective Lieutenant Parker, squat, spread, and bulky, like a stand-up keg of root beer.

  “How’s Viggy?”

  “How would I know?”

  His hand was thick and tight on my forearm, and uncomfortable. But this was Parker out of Homicide, so what’s a black-and-blue, and the dreary remarks about look at the hickey and look where….

  “I hope,” he said, “your nose is clean.”

  Real roguish, I said, “Yo no comprenday.”

  “Ha, ha,” said Pancho the bartender.

  “Blow,” Parker said. “Give us four more in advance and blow. We’re talking. And put it on his check.”

  “He don’t get no check,” Pancho said.

  “You’re telling me nothing,” Parker said.

  Pancho set up eight soldiers in front of us with a tall glass of soda for Parker and a tall glass of water for me.

  “Four altogether,” Parker said. “I didn’t mean four each.”

  “Why you worry? On the house.” Pancho moved away and he stuck his tongue out at Parker’s back, and he winked at me, and he raised his right hand in a fist and chopped at his right forearm with his left hand in a meaningful gesture.

  I winked back at him.

  “Algernon Hale,” Parker said.

  “That’s my line.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Algernon Hale. Charlie Batesem. Sally Irvine. Dead and murdered.”

  “Yeah. I read about it.”

  “Where’s Viggy?”

  “Isn’t he around?”

  “Stop with the stuff. You and that Viggy….”

  Pierre Vyseuseau came by.

  “Ah. The dear Peter Chambers. How do you do?”

  “Hi,” I said.

  “It is my pleasure. Extremely.”

  “Me too.”

  “And, ah,” he said, “also the good and the dear lieutenant.”

  “Go fix your beard,” Parker said.

  “But alors….” He touched the beard and he presented the teeth, equinely. He wandered off.

  Noddingly, and not liking it, Parker said, “So you know him too. You’re doing all right. Skoal.”

  “Skoal.”

  Boom.

  “Where’s Viggy?”

  “How the hell would I know?”

  “Look. Algernon Hale, Charlie Batesem. Sally — ”

  “I know. I know. Dead and murdered. Naked in a parked car by the river.”

  “Got you.” He pushed a hard finger at my shoulder.

  “Stop it, will you please. You’re embarrassing me.”

  “Come on.”

  “Where?”

  “Downtown.”

  “What for? What’s the matter with you?”

  “Complicity in murder.”

  “Man, you’re nuts.”

  “Look,” Parker said. “You wink at a gambling joint. You wink at a whorehouse. You wink at reefer boys. You wink at protection. You wink at policy. You wink at garbage rackets. You do not wink at murder. Nobody winks at murder. You’re in trouble, feller. Let’s go.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You said naked in a car by the river.”

  “Sure. I read about it.”

  “You could have read about dead and you could have read about murdered. But you could not have read about naked.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the papers don’t know about the naked. See what I mean?”

  I saw what he meant.

  Chambers: the smart dick.

  The smart dick stank. Net and gross.

  Pancho, worry-eyed, moved up. “You wish more?”

  “No,” Parker said. “We’re leaving.”

  “Ai” Pancho said. “More soda?”

  He poured soda into Parker’s glass, and, gracefully, he tipped it.

  Into Parker’s lap.

  “Ai,” he said, expressively unhappy. ”Ai, ai, ai”

  Then he tipped the bottle and he dropped that too; so Parker had ice in his lap, and a glass, and bubble water, and a bubbling bottle. He gasped critically, “The black little bastard,” and he vacated the stool, slapping at his pants.

  I ducked and I ran.

  I ran for the stairs.

  I didn’t go down, I went up.

  Up was the second floor and then up was the third floor and then up was the fourth floor. I opened a door into a long, straight, unadorned corridor, the end of which was a steel door that was Viggy’s office. I sprinted up the slender corridor, and, sprinting, I remembered:

  Pierre Vyseuseau had called me Peter Chambers.

  Pierre Vyseuseau should have called me Barry Drumgoole.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I TRIED the doorknob.

  Then I knuckled the door.

  Rapidly and with both fists.

  Fat the Butcher said, “Hell, where’s the fire?”

  I shut the door behind me and I leaned on it. “Get on the phone. Call the checkroom. Tell them to put my hat and coat away. Somewhere. The girl knows me. I don’t have a check.”

  Denny O’Shea, crinkled-eyed and rosy, unbuckled out of a green leather chair. “What’s up?”

  “He’s charged,” the Butcher said. “That’s what’s up.”

  “Tell them,” I said. “If anyone asks, I left. In a hurry.”

  “Who’s going to ask?”

  “Parker’s going to ask. Louis Parker, out of Homicide.”

  The Butcher moved. Silently and quickly. “Checkroom,” he said to the phone. “Pete Chambers, Viggy’s brain guy. Hurry up. Get his hat and coat out of there. Now.” He waited. “Fine. Send it up here, the back way. If anybody wants to know, he left in a hell of a hurry. About two minutes ago. Ring me and tell me.”

  He dropped the phone and he narrowed down his eyes to black, horizontal jelly beans and he gave me the one-two, toes to head and back. Then he went around the desk and sat in the thick-padded swivel chair, slumpingly, one small patent-leather shoe over a corner of the clean desk.

  I leaned on the door and I sopped breath.

  Emetically Denny said, “Dramatic,” and he went back to the green leather easy chair.

  “Shut up,” I said, “or get up.”

  “Sure. Come and get it.”

  I came and I got it. One thousand dollars in one hundred-dollar bills out of an inside-the-jacket alligator wallet.

  “I win tonight. Because I’m a lousy gambler.”

  “What goes?” the Butcher said.

  “I owe him — ” Denny said.

  “I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to him.” Fat the Butcher was neither fat nor butcher; he was slim, small, fragile-boned, and neat and he talked with muscular economy.

  Enrico Fattibuccio readily degenerates to Fat the Butcher

  with the kids on the block on Mulberry Street and the kids grow up and you are Fat the Butcher until you die and what’s the difference. He was Viggy’s right hand in New York, general manager with a piece of the joint; bright as crystal and just as smooth, but harder; flat-voiced in monotone; lithe as a dancer in motion (in point of fact, he had been a dancer years back, proud of his three weeks’ turn at the Music Hall in high heels and tight pants). He was handsome as a movie actor; he looked quite like that guy, the small one, the one with the wooden lips and glitter-black eyes and the gloss-black hair.

  “Oh,” Denny said.

  There was a tap on the door.

  The butcher said, “Who?”


  “Valerie.”

  The Butcher looked at me. “Open it up.”

  “It’s open,” I said. “I just came in.”

  “It’s shut. It’s always shut from the outside, unless you got a key.”

  I turned the knob for a tall, prettily pouted redhead with red-shining lips. She brought my hat and coat. She said, “Oh, Mr. Butcher.”

  “Oh, Miss Valerie,” he mimicked.

  “No. I mean a man came a few seconds after you called. I had just removed the hat and coat. A stocky dark man with black hair and very angry. He asked me if I knew Mr. Chambers and had I seen him. I told him I did and I had, and that he blew out a few minutes before in a gosh-awful hurry.”

  “What about him?” the Butcher asked. “Where is he?”

  “He took his things and he left. In a hurry too.”

  “Natch,” I said.

  “Right, beautiful,” the Butcher said. “Thanks.” To me, he said, “Now what?”

  “Now I get DDD on my report card and I get four plus on my Wassermann and I get flunked out of my profession and I get canceled out on my bond. That’s all. Unless.”

  “A very funny guy we got here,” the Butcher said, mirthlessly.

  “Unless what?” Denny said.

  The Butcher swiveled his head around. “Denny, you will please excuse us. I got things to discuss around with this guy.”

  “A pleasure.” Denny stood up and he touched the redhead’s arm. “Come on, sexy, I’ll buy you a drink.” The door shut.

  “Mama mia. …” The Butcher’s voice disappeared while

  he bent over and opened a low refrigerated liquor closet behind him. He produced a bottle of White Rock, a bottle of Harvey’s Bristol Cream, and a twelve-ounce glass. “Sherry and White Rock. What’ll you have?”

  “Soda water.”

  He brought up another glass. I poured some of the White Rock and I took it to Denny’s green chair and I sipped some and I sat the glass down on the carpet alongside the chair. The Butcher brewed his sherry and soda, sipped. “What’s with Parker?”

  “He opened his mouth and I put my big foot in it.”

  “Oh. He opened his mouth.”

  I drank soda.

  “What about?” he said.

  “What?”

  “What about are you jammed? Same as Viggy?”

  “How would you know?”

  “I know all about why Viggy’s jammed.”

  “Before or after.”

  “Before and after.”

  I pommeled, flat-hand, for cigarettes. “Could it be you had a finger in it?”

  I found the pack and it was empty. I made a ball of it and I got up and went around and I pushed his knee and I threw it in his wastepaper basket. His hand circled my wrist as I came up. Unaffectionately.

  “Cut out the crapola,” he said.

  I twisted a look up at him.

  Squinting, he looked down at me. “Don’t make with the smart remarks.”

  I pulled up and he let go my wrist. I went back to my green chair. He opened a plastic cigarette box and he tossed me a fresh pack of Luckies. I pulled the tape and cut the head off the top and ripped a corner with my teeth and took a cigarette and lit it and tossed the pack back, sliding along the desk.

  “Enlighten me, brother Butcher.”

  “There’s that tapestry stuff and the three cantaloupes in the car and Viggy’s lammed up because you’re his smart-pants operator. Now don’t start skipping rope with me or I hit you on the head with the bottle. I don’t mix with any of the extra stuff. I am sitting here pretty like a prince. I make a living. So don’t crack any more.”

  Real detectivelike I said, “Well a guy can ask.”

  “All right. You asked and you got answered. Now, first, where you been the last couple days? I’m asking for Viggy.”

  I puffed on my cigarette and I drank my soda water.

  “Working.”

  “On what?”

  “On Viggy’s matter.”

  “Yes, you were. Sleeping out with a tomato, more likely.”

  “Viggy,” I said, “is jammed because a guy named Ralph March put the hot end of a cigarette against the balloon. So they identified Algernon Hale at once, and this Ralph spills all about how Viggy came in with Algy and Charlie from the West, and Viggy has suddenly got hot water all around him up to the neck. How do I know?”

  The Butcher smiled. More softly he said, “How?”

  “Because I’m working on it. How did Viggy know?”

  “He got tipped. From downtown.”

  “So Viggy knows Parker will be around to talk to him and Viggy can’t figure an out (neither can I) so, naturally, he lams, which is very smart.”

  “Right.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s holed up with Marmaduke. Down there on Lex. He sent out word only once. To contact you.”

  I brought the stump of the cigarette to an ash tray on the desk, and I sighed and I looked around the room.

  “Now what about you?” the Butcher asked.

  “Briefly, you could say I’m on the lam too. From now on.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m a dunce.”

  “Oh.”

  “You know how it is. Everybody is a dunce sometimes.”

  “Same thing?”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning this Viggy trick with the tapestries.”

  “Same thing,” I said, sorrowfully.

  Fat the Butcher took his leg off the desk and came out and sat in a green chair opposite me and spread his knees and rested his elbows and clasped his hands.

  Dreamily he said, “Viggy on Lexington Avenue and you on the duck. What you call a nice, clean situation.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’ll keep in touch?”

  “How are you fixed for tapped wires?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “How do you contact Viggy?”

  “There’s a bartender in the neighborhood that I know down there. I call him — from a phone booth — and he drops in on Marmaduke. Then later on I call him again, if there’s any message for me.”

  I got up and I slapped a hand along the metal bars. “All right. Here’s the way I’ll work it. I’ll slip into Denny’s Utopia if I have anything important, and Denny’ll come up here and tell you, and you’ll get in touch with your bartender and your bartender will contact Viggy. Roundabout but safe. No phone calls through here. Check?”

  “Check. Let’s tell Denny he’s a messenger boy.”

  He drank the rest of his sherry and soda and he phoned down to the bar. “Pancho? Mr. O’Shea’s brother. Tell him to come on up.”

  Denny came back and Fat the Butcher gave us each a Lucky like daddy doling out lollipops. He lit them for us and he blew the match out. “Denny,” he said, “I would like a favor.”

  Denny towered over him, handsome and smiling-eyed. “You didn’t do me any favors with that redheaded bitch with the sultry mouth.”

  “This is another kind of a favor.”

  “We ought to trade favors. I like to trade.”

  “Some other time. This one you’re doing for your brother. Viggy’s holed up for a while, trouble around the town. Brains over here got himself caught with his tuchus in a barrel, so he’s scarce till he gets himself unwrapped. Only he’s working on a thing for your brother. So, just in case he stays clear of the can, he might want to report. He just mentioned that maybe the law’s got an ear on the wires. Could be. So we want a favor.”

  “How’s about the trade?” Denny said.

  Preoccupied, the Butcher said, “What trade?”

  “The redhead. I’ve got a needle for her.”

  “You wouldn’t like me to throw you the hell out of here?”

  “You and who else?”

  “Now, now, boys,” I said.

  Denny said, “Who the hell does he think he is?”

  “I know who you are,” the Butcher said. “You’re Viggy’s brother. Peri
od. Outside of that you’re a large hunk of nothing.”

  Denny reached out and spoiled the Butcher’s stiff white

  collar and drew him over. The Butcher raised his knee sharply and Denny grunted and angled holding his groin. The Butcher smiled, side-mouthed; then Denny moved in a football rush, head down. The Butcher sat on the carpet, panting.

  I got between them.

  I shoved Denny into a chair.

  I said, “What the hell were you drinking downstairs? Singapore slings? With vodka?”

  The Butcher stood up and dusted at his pants; he had a round red spot in each cheek and his lips were tighter than a show girl’s society boy. He looked at Denny and he looked at me, then he shrugged and adjusted his collar and bounced up and sat on a corner of the desk and he clumped his heels rhythmically, like a boy on a fence.

  “That’s the way it is.” He rolled his tongue around in his mouth. “Guys have to have brothers.”

  I looked at Denny. “What’s the matter with you? What’s special about that redhead?”

  “A dime a dozen.”

  “So what’s all the soapboxing about?”

  “Nothing. I was kidding the guy.”

  “So why’d you reach for him?”

  “That’s different. I didn’t like the way he talked to me.”

  Didactically the Butcher said, “Sensitive. All guys’ brothers are sensitive.”

  “That’s enough,” I said.

  “I wish he wasn’t his brother. I’d put ribbons on his face.”

  “Any time,” Denny said.

  “That’s enough,” I said. “Tell him.”

  “You tell him.” The Butcher got off the desk and made himself more Harvey’s and White Rock.

  “It’s like this,” I said. “I don’t know if it will be necessary, but while I’m dodging cops, I might want to get word through to Viggy. I don’t want to call here because it might be that the wires are tapped. So what I’ll do is get into your UTOPIA, tell you, and then you come up here in person and tell the Butcher. Then the Butcher can get it through to Viggy. As I say, it might not be necessary, but we may as well have it arranged. Okay?”

  “Why not?”

  “That’s the way I like to hear you talk. Now if you two are finished playing bouncy ball, I’m getting out of here.”

  “Sure,” said Denny.

  “Sure,” said the Butcher.

  “Fine,” I said. “Stop the killer-diller with other guys’ girls.”