Homicide at Yuletide Page 11

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I don’t like it. He’s going to be at his place of business, out there on Long Island, at four o’clock. Would you like to go out there with me?”

  “If you wish, certainly. But what does it mean—you don’t like it?”

  “I’ve a hunch on this thing.”

  “Hunch.”

  “I’ve a hunch it’s a woman, and there are certainly enough of them around with sufficient motive. Pinning it on one of them, that’s the tough operation. You had to get into that traffic jam, huh?”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  I told her about the wrist watch and the electric clock. “It figures to have happened about then, between, say, one and one-thirty, during the time you were languishing in the can. But, if there had been no traffic jam, you wouldn’t have been in the can, you’d have been with him at that time, and then, maybe, the whole set-up would have been different.”

  “Perhaps. Let’s get back to your hunch. Does it have an explanation?”

  “It has, the way I figure it. When I got there, that room looked like an earthquake had hit it. There was every sign of a terrific struggle, all the way up to a broken window. But to me, it looked like a frame.”

  “How? Why?”

  “First, the landlady.”

  “What landlady?”

  “There’s a landlady downstairs. She hears everything, even when he slams the door to go out. And she was in all day nursing a cold. But she heard nothing. She thought he was upstairs asleep. With a ruckus like that thing was set up for, there’d have been plenty of noise, and she’d have heard it. How’s that sound?”

  “Good.”

  “Second, he was laid out in a clean white shirt and pressed plaid pants. Hardly a wrinkle. A guy doesn’t go through a terrific scrap like that maintaining a crisp white shirt and pressed pants. Check?”

  “You’re pretty good, Mr. Chambers.”

  “I saw it. Let’s accept it for a frame. The question is—why? I haven’t had much time to think about it, I haven’t had much time to think about a lot of it—but just this one little segment of it—why?”

  “It’s a good question.”

  “The way the answer stacks up is that he was shot first, and then each item of the room was set up to make it look like a fight, and what a fight. So now we fit our hunch in. It was murder and robbery, and then the room was adjusted to make it look like a real wild fight. Why?”

  “I don’t answer rhetorical questions.”

  “Who would have engaged in a scrap that would cause a room to look like that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Two men. Only two men. A woman couldn’t battle a man and have it wind up in that terrific shambles. But it was set up like that. Why? To make it look like his opponent was a man. To throw out the woman angle. Crazy? Maybe. But that’s my story, and I hope someone is going to be stuck with it.”

  “Doesn’t sound too crazy, at that.”

  “That’s why I don’t like the Noah angle. It sort of takes the shine off the edges of my hunch. That’s why I want to talk with him.”

  “Okay. We’ve got a date.”

  “Will you pick me up at my place, say, half past three?”

  “You don’t have a car, do you?”

  “New York’s no place for a car.”

  “That’s a matter of opinion. My car’s banged up, but I know where I can borrow a flivver. All right. I’ll see you at three-thirty.”

  “Swell.”

  I got my things and I said good-by and I went to Evelyn Dru. Evelyn Dru lived in a white stone two-story with a pointed top on Ninety-Second Street off the park. Downstairs, there was a wide lobby with name bells, and Evelyn Dru was 1 A. I laid my finger on the push-button, but I did not push. The lobby door was opened for me. By Barney Bernandino. “Going up?” he said.

  “Hi. Where’s Potsy?”

  “Potsy don’t go everywhere with me.”

  “No?”

  “No. What are you doing here?”

  “Evelyn Dru.”

  He turned down the corners of his mouth. “Yeah?”

  “You coming from there, by any chance?”

  “None of your business, by any chance. Did you follow up on that Grace White?”

  “It’ll be attended to. In due time.”

  “It’ll be attended to before that.”

  “Listen,” I said. “You didn’t mention anything to her, did you?”

  “Who? Mention to who?”

  “Upstairs.”

  “Look, punk. This is Barney Bernandino. I don’t let business affairs interfere with social affairs. I don’t mix them. Why do you ask?”

  “Well, running along with my line of inquiry, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it wasn’t wife number three who was with him in the club that evening.”

  “You mean that Eddie Nuki deal?”

  “I do.”

  “So what?”

  “So nothing. I’m just mentioning it.”

  He put a hand on my arm. “Watch yourself, punk. That’s a nice little girl.”

  I took his arm off. “You call everybody punk?”

  “People I like.”

  “Good-by, Barney. And do me a favor.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t like me.”

  I walked up one flight, and the nice little girl answered my knock. Evelyn Dru didn’t look tired. Her green-blue eyes were wide and clear. She wore a gray suit and black shoes and she had a black velvet band around her white throat.

  “Well, hello. Please come in.” She had a voice as smooth as yeast, and of similar propensity.

  “Merry Christmas.”

  “You too.”

  A fur coat and a little fur hat were draped over a chair.

  “Were you going out?” I said.

  “Yes. Church and lunch.”

  “Can we double on that?”

  “I think it would be delightful.”

  We went to church, and to lunch, and then I took her to Trennem’s Dark Morning Tavern for brandy. In a booth over brandy I said, “Where did you last see Sheldon Talbot?”

  “What business is that of yours?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Sheldon Talbot. Dead. Murdered and robbed. I’ve been retained by the estate to try and unravel it.”

  She blinked twice and drank her brandy quickly. “Are you sure? I mean—”

  “I’m sure. Now will you please tell me when you saw him?”

  “I saw him the evening before last.”

  “What time?”

  “At about seven o’clock.”

  “Where?”

  “At an address he gave me when he called. Thirteenth Street.”

  “Did you go to a night club with him?”

  “No.”

  “You stayed in his room?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long did you stay?”

  “About an hour.”

  “Did you agree to that revocation deal? Too?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Terry agreed. Gay agreed. Now you. Did you agree?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you afford it?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Can you afford to omit ten thousand dollars a year? That’s what I mean.”

  “No. No, I can’t. But he was in desperate circumstances. I certainly couldn’t say no.”

  “Nice people. Everybody’s such nice people. Only, one of the nice people put a bullet into him. How do you live, Miss Dru?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You used to be a model.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And now—?”

  “Until now, I had that income.”

  “And you renounced it”—I snapped my fingers—”like that.”

  She started to leave.

  I didn’t let her.

  I said, “No hard feelings,
Miss Dru.”

  “I don’t like the way you’re talking to me.”

  “Miss Dru, I’m working on a job, and believe me, I like it just as little as anyone else involved. Will you co-operate? Will you please co-operate?”

  She hesitated and then she smiled. “I’m sorry.”

  “May I ask my questions?”

  “I’ll do my best to answer them.”

  “Thank you. You told me that you turned down an income of ten thousand dollars a year, just because an ex-husband asks it for a favor.”

  “That wasn’t my money, Mr. Chambers. I never asked him for a cent. It was a—a form of gratuity. At the time, he could afford it. But, to my way of thinking, it was not permanent, ever. Certainly, if the man needed it, I had no right in the world to raise any objection.”

  “Then what happens? How do you live?”

  “I can model again. I can get married. I’ve been asked, you know. I have many beaus.”

  “Like Barney Bernandino?”

  “You know him?”

  “It’s nothing to boast about.”

  “I must disagree with you. I think he’s a very interesting man.”

  “All in the viewpoint. You bringing him to my supper party tonight?”

  “Of course not.”

  I paid and we left. The street was blazing after the dimness of Trennem’s. We walked up Sixth Avenue to the park, but I began to feel my knees buckle. Sleep in a bathtub is conducive to further sleep in the afternoon. I called a cab and took her home, and took myself home. I borrowed one of the superintendent’s passkeys, and let myself into my apartment. The blinds were drawn and it was warm and cozy. I got out of my things and patted the pillows on the couch and I was about to lie down when the phone sounded off. I groaned and I answered it. It was Gene Tiny.

  “Pete, Pete—”

  “Yes. What is it?”

  “Pete, there’s been a fire down there, a terrific fire. Two alarms, with the engines pouring water, and flames, and smoke—”

  “So there’s been a fire. So what? I’m very tired. I’d like to grab a nap.”

  “Pete!”

  “Hang up, will you?”

  “Grace White. Her place burned down.”

  “What?”

  “Grace White.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’m down there. I’m calling from the corner.”

  “What the hell are you doing down there?”

  “Barney sent me. He called me and told me to go down there and talk to her. I was to get a picture of Talbot and a lady, taken by mistake evening before last in a club called Eddie Nuki’s. I was to mention your name, and a fellow you sent to talk with her at the club, Alger Shaw.”

  “Did you get to see her?”

  “No. I just got here. The place is blazing like all get out. What do I do now?”

  “You go home, that’s what you do now. What the hell else is there to do? Did you call Barney?”

  “Not yet. I wanted to check with you first.”

  “Well, call him and tell him. Then go home. And don’t forget to pick me up at three-thirty.”

  I hung up and sprawled out on the couch.

  Sleep wouldn’t come.

  9

  I HOOKED ONE LEG up against the wall and hooked the other one over it in the limbs-up position that sends blood to the brain so you can think. I thought. There was nothing to think about. Grace White had had a fire. So what? Let Grace White worry about it. Or the insurance company. Maybe spontaneous combustion had put a spark to the mattress. Or maybe unspontaneous combustion had started an argument and the guy was smoking a cigarette. What was my interest there? Sheldon Talbot had called his daughter from a night club. So what? He had been with a lady. So what? Evelyn Dru had seen him at seven o’clock. Fine. Suppose she had extended the tête-à-tête all the way through to the night-club routine, so whatie what what? Or suppose it had been any of the other dear ladies. Same so what? That still didn’t locate a killer, preferably female, in a furnished room on Thirteenth Street the next afternoon. It was simply check every lousy little detail, like a good little private richard, period. So I was trying to check. So Grace White had had a fire. Well, that was just too damn bad for Grace White. She’d just have to find herself another little stable out of which to operate. I brought my legs down abruptly, like a frustrated tart, and, sternly, I went to sleep, encompassed, at once, in a frenzied nightmare of ringing telephones.

  I reached out and answered one.

  I woke to hear the thing squeak: “Pete, Pete, what the—Pete.”

  “Yeah, man,” I said. “Who’s this?”

  “Parker. What’s the matter with you?”

  “Sleeping. If it still happens.”

  “You up now?”

  “Hardly.”

  “Get dressed. And get down to the Grace White Enterprises on Jane Street.”

  I looked at my watch. It was two o’clock. “What for?” I said.

  “There’s been a fire—”

  “Look. What’s the matter with you? Generally you’re a pretty solid citizen. What happens to you around Christmas time? First you’re a real dizzy big shot around Traffic Court, and now they got you chasing fire-engines. I don’t want to play. I’m sleepy. Nobody lets me get over being sleepy. Please.”

  “You be down here in fifteen minutes, Mr. Chambers— or I’ll send up a couple of the choicest strong-arms in the Department, with instructions—just for the hell of it.”

  He hung up.

  I was there in fifteen minutes.

  The charred remains of the establishment that housed the Grace White Enterprises, Inc., were roped off from the public like they rope off an excavation after a car falls in. I walked up to one of the uniformed gentlemen in front of the rope and I said, “Lieutenant Parker, please.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “This is a fine Police Department we got.”

  “Oh, one of them wise guys, eh?” He grabbed my arm and hustled me off, leaving blue marks on the arm that wouldn’t wash off for two weeks.

  I tried another cop. I was much more polite.

  “May I see Lieutenant Parker, please? He is one of the officers in charge inside.”

  “You know him?”

  “Yes, sir. He sent for me.”

  “Wait here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He turned and he went inside. I ducked under the rope and went after him. The first person I saw was Alger Shaw.

  “Hi,” he said.

  Parker was right behind him, talking to the cop from behind the rope. “Okay,” Parker said. The cop turned, saw me, said, “Hey, what the hell are you doing here?”

  “Okay, okay,” Parker said.

  The cop saluted, muttered, and went back to his rope.

  Lieutenant Parker. Built like a butter tub. Short legs, round torso, black oily crew-cut hair. Straight spine, powerful chest, and a short stride like the strut of a muscle-bound wrestler. And a heart that was bigger than all of him.

  “Hi, Lieutenant,” I said.

  He poked at my shoulder. “Sit down.”

  Somebody gave me an unburned chair. I disregarded it.

  “All right,” Parker said. “Let’s hear.”

  “Hear what? What the hell goes?”

  Captain Ludwig Zshluck came up. “My, my, profanity,” he said. “Why do all you guys try to talk so tough?”

  “Hello, Captain.”

  “Hello to you.” He was a slim white-haired man who talked in trim modulated tones. “You want to hear the facts?”

  “Do they concern me?”

  “They concern you.”

  “Then I want to hear.”

  “Nice of you.” He pulled out a thin cigar, looked at it, changed his mind, and put it away. “There was a fire. A burned body was discovered. The burned body was dead. The burned dead body had a bullet in it. The burned dead body with the bullet in it was Grace White.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t interru
pt. A short time ago, a young man appeared, name of Alger Shaw. Upon learning from one of the more talkative patrolmen outside that a murder had been committed, he offered information. The information involved you.”

  “When somebody’s been killed,” Alger offered, “nobody should keep secrets. Right, Pete?”

  Parker said, “A wine-red beard. Who ever heard of a wine-red beard?”

  “I never did,” I said, “until I was commissioned on a case.”

  “And who, pray,” said Zshluck, “commissioned you?”

  “Barney Bernandino.”

  That was payment, in spades, for a topsy-turvy apartment and an office that I hadn’t seen yet and the indignity of being frisked in front of a lady and a change in my mailing address. Now Barney would have a topsy-turvy apartment and a policeman-cluttered office and a professional job of frisking and perhaps, too, a change in his mailing address to close quarters and stone walls.

  “Barney Bernandino,” Zshluck said. “Lawyers, and writs, and I refuse to answer on the ground that it will incriminate me. The merry-go-round.”

  Parker crooked a finger at a stenographer, who came pencil and pad in hand. Parker looked at Zshluck. “You want his statement?”

  “I do.”

  “The Captain wants your statement.”

  “Only too happy,” I said.

  I told them that Barney Bernandino was interested in a man with wine-red hair and a wine-red beard and a limp. Wine-red was a devotee of the modern jazz noises, and wine-red had been in a night club the night before last. Barney had asked me to look into the night club, but I couldn’t because I had a party of my own going. So I commissioned Alger Shaw. I had called him from Mr. Bernandino’s place. Alger got in touch with me last night and gave me the Grace White story about wine-red getting stuck in the wrong picture, and I had relayed that information to Barney, and there you are, gentlemen, the rest of it dovetails with whatever Mr. Shaw told you, I am sure.

  “This place was ruined,” Captain Zshluck said.

  I looked around. “You ain’t kidding.”

  “All the paper stuff, pictures, negatives, burned to ashes.” He motioned to a blackened steel desk on which were two high heaps of slick photographs. “Sit down over there, will you?”

  I sat.

  He said, “I want you to look over these stacks of pictures. See if you recognize any.”

  I looked up at him. “What’s the gag, Captain?”