Death is the Last Lover (Prologue Books) Read online

  Now I sipped my drink, stalling for time, collecting my thoughts, making up my mind. “Tomorrow,” I said. “Tomorrow, I intend to bring your husband in, and I intend to relieve myself of everything I know about the death of Vivian Frayne and the death of Adam Frick.” I tried a long shot. “And the death of Mousie Lawrence.”

  “Who’s that?” she said.

  “Nobody,” I said. “Precisely, nobody.”

  “Why tomorrow?” she said.

  “Because tonight I’m still glorious unto myself, the private richard bumbling along in his private investigation, building his ego, and hoping for the best. Are you the one Adam had a date with?”

  “No.”

  “Then what were you doing there?”

  She poured more brandy into her glass. “Let’s say I was drunk, acting on one of my impulses. I’ve been drinking most of the day, please remember.”

  “What impulse?” I said.

  “I wanted to tell Adam off, once and for all. I simply didn’t want him back here, ever. I decided to go over to his place and tell him.”

  “How’d you get in?”

  “I have a key, of course.”

  “The door was slightly open when I got there.”

  “I probably didn’t slam it in my hurry to leave. It’s that kind of door, shuts on a slam.”

  “And did you tell him off, Mrs. Phelps?”

  She smiled, sweetly. “You trying to trap me, Mr. Chambers?”

  “Just asking, Mrs. Phelps.”

  “No, I didn’t tell him off,” she said. “I got there, rang the bell, there was no answer. I decided to go in and wait for him. I opened the door, went in, and there he was in that easy chair, shot, gurgling, dying. I didn’t want to be involved in it, of course. There was nothing I could do to help him, nothing.”

  “Yes, I’ll buy that,” I said.

  “The quickest way to get any kind of help to him would be an emergency call to a hospital. I used his phone, and did exactly that. And then I left. Please believe me, Mr. Chambers.”

  “I’m trying to. Honestly.”

  “Look, if I’d have had anything to do with it, would I have called the hospital?”

  “Who said you called the hospital?”

  She stared at me blankly for a moment. “But who else?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Possibly, you. Probably, you. I don’t know. I’ll say this. If it turns out that you’re telling the truth, I’ll do my level best to keep you out of it. The cops are working on it right now, and me, I’m still working on it. If either one of us catches up with whoever dunit — and that whoever is not you — I promise you that I won’t involve you in it, I’ll never mention your name, there’d be no reason to, and concealing a little information like that harms no one.”

  “Thank you. You’re awfully sweet.”

  “Well, that’s about it, Mrs. Phelps.”

  “Is it?” she said, and there were tears in her eyes, and she smiled a faint, queer, lovely, enigmatic smile. She was near to me and she touched me.

  I tried very hard to be faithful to Sophia Sierra.

  TWENTY

  I strolled toward Madison for a taxicab. I thought about returning to the Nirvana but rejected that. I found a cab and said, “115 East 64th.” I was going to Vivian Frayne’s but I kept thinking about Barbara Phelps. She was either the most straightforward woman I had ever met or she was more twisted than a prize case out of Freud. I had been certain that she was it as far as Adam Frick was concerned, and if she had done Frick, she would also have been involved with Mousie’s murder, since both of them got it from the same gun. I had been certain that Adam himself had tipped me when he had gasped, “Wife … wife.” Wife? Who else but Gordon Phelps’ wife? What other wife did we know in common? I had been certain — but now I was no longer certain. She had parried every thrust, she had wriggled out of every trap; and her very demeanor — she was either a natural-born actress, or the brandy served as insulation against guilt, or she was telling the truth. I shrugged, lonely in my corner of the cab. This was for Parker, not for me. This was for the public cop, not the private cop. And I thought about Parker, lovely man. We had been together for a long time this night — at Adam Frick’s, at Parker’s office — and not once had he mentioned Gordon Phelps. I had promised to deliver Phelps within twenty-four hours, and Parker depended upon that; if Phelps were to have come into our discussion, I would have had to bring him up. We had made a trade, Parker and I; I had Vivian Frayne’s keys in my pocket to prove it, and I had quite a good many confidential facts. Well, he would have Gordon Phelps within twenty-four hours, and he might have Mrs. Phelps to boot. And he’d have all of my confidential facts.

  “115 East 64th,” said the cabbie.

  “Yes, sir,” I said and I paid and I went into a narrow lobby and Parker’s keys were as efficacious as penicillin in a bordello. Everything worked smoothly. A gander at the bell-brackets produced FRAYNE at 4G. One key opened the downstairs door, and another key opened the door of 4G. There was no fuss, there was no fight, there were no balky door locks. I put on the lights and I approved, noddingly, as I stalked about, appreciative as a geologist in a newly-blasted cave. Vivian Frayne, before the bullets, had done very much of all right for herself. The two-room apartment was as sumptuous as the promise of a politician. The layout was more than a two-room apartment. The foyer was a room in itself; then there was a three-step-down living room, expansive and high-ceilinged; then a fine wide spacious bedroom; then a kitchenette that was diminutive only in comparison to the vastness of the other rooms. There were nooks and alcoves which in themselves were additional rooms, and there was an awninged, tile-floored terrace outside the bedroom. The apartment was a delight, but my intensive inspection of it added not one whit to my investigation into the death of its occupant. So, I had seen Vivian Frayne’s apartment. So, I had played detective and inspected the scene of the crime. Three cheers for me. I put out the lights in all the rooms, and I was just about to switch the foyer light, when I heard the sound.

  Somebody was poking at the lock.

  I flicked out the light and, in darkness, I waited behind the door. I breathed deeply, through an open mouth, trying to tranquilize the nip-ups in my stomach. Who would be poking at Vivian Frayne’s lock in the middle of the night? And whoever it was — it was taking him a hell of a long time. I waited, panting through an open mouth, feeling the perspiration bristle against my skin. I waited. …

  Finally the door swung open. And closed.

  Somebody was feeling for the light switch.

  Somebody brushed against me. I sprang.

  We went to the floor together but it was a quick struggle. Once I felt the pick of a sharp instrument against my cheek, but I rolled from it, lashed out twice, and there was no more resistance. We lay still, with me on top, the body beneath me soft and warm. I pushed up, found the light switch, flicked it, and there sprawled supine but always attractive lay Sophia Sierra, not unconscious, her eyes fluttering, surprise still a mark on her face. Her right hand held a sharp-pronged pick-lock. A black velvet short coat was over the red dress. A pocketbook was hooked over her shoulder.

  She blinked until, it appeared, I came into focus, for, immediately, she sat up. “You!” she said and that molehill of a word carried mountains of unspoken rhetoric.

  “You!” I replied. “I’ll be a son of a bitch!”

  “You are,” she said and sat and rubbed at her jaw.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I said. I helped her up. “And with a professional pick-lock yet.” She shook her head groggily, but then she smiled, and I went soft all over again. “What are you doing here?” I said but I said it much more pleasantly.

  “You first,” she said. “You tell me first.”

  We went together to the living room. I put on the light. She slid the pocketbook down her arm, doffed the black coat and spilled out on the couch. She looked tired and frightened but it detracted not at all from the lustre of her allure.
Here we were, in the middle of the night, alone in an apartment where there was no prospect of our being disturbed, a frightened girl and a guy very much on the make — the thing was rife with radiant possibilities: so I shrugged it off. (I’m sick.)

  “Honey,” I said. “I’m working.”

  “Boy, that’s all you do, don’t you?”

  I sat near her, enjoying the warmth of her thigh. “Honey,” I said, “you’re a nice, sweet, attractive gal, and I’m crazy about you.”

  “Yeah, I remember,” she said.

  “So what’s with a pick-lock?” I said.

  “What?”

  “The thing you’re holding in your hand.”

  She looked at it, opened her bag, dropped it into her bag.

  “Just a minute,” I said. The bag was still open. I fumbled in my pockets and found a hundred dollar bill. “Yours,” I said. “Something I’ve been holding for you. From Feninton for young love out of Las Vegas.”

  “What are you talking about?” she said.

  (Score another against Gordon Phelps who said this was a slick chick whose one interest in life was loot.)

  “A gift from Feninton, remember?” I said. “It’s been a rather interrupted evening, but don’t you remember?”

  “Oh, yes, that,” she said. “But that was a gift for you, wasn’t it, not for me.”

  “Quiet!” I said and stuffed the bill into her bag. “Now what’s with pick-locks?”

  “You first,” she said. She closed the bag and put it aside. “You’re supposed to tell me what you’re doing here.”

  “You set up the protocol, huh?” My sigh was part fatigue, part lust. “All right, your protocol. I’m here because I’m working on a murder thing, and I’m working in co-operation with the cops.”

  “Cops?” she said.

  “You heard me. I’m here because the cops gave me permission to be here. In fact, they gave me the keys to get in here. You — you’re here by virtue of a pick-lock. You’ve broken in here and you’re trespassing. That’s a crime either way. If I call the cops in — which, of course, I should do — you’re in deep trouble right up to that gorgeous chin of yours. Is that what you want me to do?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Then you’re going to have to talk it up, sweetie.”

  The dark eyes swept over me. I ducked from meeting them. I kept looking at her forehead. “What’s with pick-locks?” I said. “Where’d you get it?”

  “There are all kinds of guys come into the Nirvana. I had one of them get it for me.”

  “So you could break your way in here?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” she said.

  “Why?” I said.

  She bent her head. She primped at her hair. She clicked a fingernail against her teeth. It took time. She was wrestling with a problem, and she finally decided it. In my favor.

  “I’ll tell you,” she said.

  I was not in the mood for her favors. Not now. “You’d better,” I said.

  She disregarded that. She sat up and crossed her legs. I tried.

  “That Vivian Frayne was a crazy bastard,” she said.

  “Yes, yes, I know all about that. She was good, but she was also bad, and all the rest of that crap. Now, please, let’s get to the point. What are you doing here?”

  “I might be jammed in her murder.”

  “Did you do it?”

  “No.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I’ll tell you, if you’ll let me.”

  “I’m trying to let you,” I said.

  “Phelps wasn’t the first guy she’d pinched right from under my nose — ”

  “Maybe you’re too aggressive — ”

  “I was burning when it happened — ”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “I beat it out of the Nirvana at that time. I took off for a couple cf weeks. I went for a vacation. Matter of fact, I went to Cuba. But I was burning at that Frayne, burning. And when I burn, mister, I burn.”

  “I hope so,” I said.

  “I wrote her a few letters from Cuba, three letters to be exact. I told her what I thought of her and her tactics. I told her I’d even it up, one way or another. I told her I had friends, real bad boys, and I told her I was going to see to it that she’d get paid off — in spades. I told her that that pretty face of hers was going to be mashed up, maybe even worse was going to happen to her. I was hot then, burning. I wanted to put a scare into her, and I did. She was scared witless.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She told me, when I got back. First she tried to soft-soap me on the Phelps deal, said it wasn’t her fault, that she hadn’t made any pitch for him, that he’d just kind of gravitated to her.”

  “Did you believe it?”

  “I did not. She was a liar, and she knew that I knew she was a liar. But by then I was kind of cooled down. I figured that Phelps had kind of passed on me. When somebody’s stuck on me, really stuck, nobody can drag him off, but nobody, not even a Vivian Frayne.”

  “Did you kind of put a little pressure on him?”

  She disregarded that. “So, I figured, if it wouldn’t have been Vivian, it would have been somebody else. I knew she was lying, but kind of, I just didn’t hold it against her any more. Live and let live and the hell with it.”

  “This your version now — for the record?”

  “Meaning?”

  “Your version now — after she’s been knocked off?”

  “I’m telling you the truth.”

  “All right. What’s that got to do with her being scared witless?”

  “She said something else to me, back there at the beginning, when I got back from my vacation. She said that if anything ever happened to her, the cops would know that it came from me, if it came from me.”

  “And how would they know?”

  “She said she was saving my letters. She said she was hanging on to them. She said that if anything happened to her, the cops would get those letters, and they’d know I was behind whatever happened to her.”

  “I get it,” I said. “And how’d you feel about that?”

  “Once I cooled off, I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to do anything, I wasn’t going to call in any of the bad boys, so I didn’t care. I was glad that I had put a little scare into her, that she wouldn’t be pulling her tricks on me, that she’d be a little careful in the future — and that was that. I practically forgot about it. We kind of became pretty good friends after that, as a matter of fact. I think you can figure the rest.”

  “You mean,” I said, “you came here tonight hoping to find those letters?”

  “That’s why I came here.”

  “So that there wouldn’t be any heat on you — for her murder?”

  “Sure. Who needs it? You know how cops can push a girl like me around.”

  “Well, maybe I can take the heat off you — without those letters.”

  “Like how?” she said.

  “If you were working last night, if you were at the Nirvana Ballroom at one o’clock last night — you’re a hundred percent in the clear — letters or no letters.”

  “I wasn’t working last night.”

  “Took the night off? Had a date? Fine. That can be proven too, you know.”

  “I took the night off but I didn’t have a date. I was tired. I stayed home.”

  “With whom?”

  “Alone.”

  “Stinks,” I said. “Leaves you wide open. She was killed last night at about one o’clock.”

  “Please.” She stood up. “Please let me try. Let me look for those goddamned letters.”

  “Forget it,” I said.

  “Please!”

  “They’re not here.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Honey, I know from the horse’s mouth. They’re not here, that’s what I’m talking about.”

  “How the hell would you know?”

  “I know — from the horse’s mouth.”


  “What horse?”

  “Cops. They’ve looked this joint over from top to bottom. Minutely, and in force. You couldn’t do that kind of search if you had this apartment all to yourself for the next year. Simply,” I said, “your letters weren’t here.”

  “But how would you know?” It was almost a wail.

  “You’d know,” I said.

  “What in all hell are you trying to say?”

  This girl was as swear-provoking as a stubbed toe. I did not swear. I rendered it as pontifically as I could manage. “Honey,” I said slowly and distinctly, “the cops racked up this joint pretty good. If your letters would have been here, they would have found your letters. And if they would have found your letters, they would have yanked you downtown, and they would probably still have you sitting on your pretty little ass, answering their pretty little questions. Do I, if you please, make myself clear?”

  “Yes, yes, you do.”

  I had been fighting hard but right then I lost the battle. In her despair she was wriggling, and wriggling in that red dress she wore created irresistible impulses within me. So, I did not resist. I went to her and gathered her in.

  She fought me off.

  “Be nice,” I said, my arms around her. “There’s a time to be nice,” she said.

  “Sorry,” I said. “You’re so right.” I went away from her. “So far you’ve been right all the way down the line,” I said. “I think you’re a smart girl, very smart. Maybe you’re still being smart right now. Maybe you’re making character for yourself right this minute — ”

  “Please be on my side,” she said, all little-girl suddenly.

  “Look,” I said, “did Vivian Frayne have a vault, do you know?”

  “I know she didn’t.”

  “How do you know she didn’t?”

  “I was curious.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of my letters.”

  “So how do you know she didn’t?”

  “I had it checked. By experts. Real experts. Friends who know how to check that sort of thing. You can depend on that. No vault. Not in any bank in the entire city of New York.”

  “Fits,” I said, “because the policy was here and not in a vault.”