Armchair in Hell (Prologue Books) Read online

  I turned her over.

  One eye glinted at me like a black marble.

  There was no other eye. There was a hole: a fibrous blood-encrusted socket. There was a sooted, broken, questioning eyebrow. There was blood and mucus, stiff-wet on her cheek. There was a lumped-up stain on the carpet. Red on red.

  I put here back on her face. The bullet had passed through her head. I didn’t look for it.

  I looked for the valise.

  I didn’t find it.

  5

  I walked until I came to a saloon and bar rye burned at the back of my throat and I returned the little glass to the bar, unquietly, and I pointed at it and the man refilled it and I knocked it down. I didn’t touch the soda. I said, “Where’s your phone?”

  “In the back.”

  I called Ralph March at the Ambassador. He wasn’t there. I shuttled from the bar to the phone, and soon enough Ralph said, “Hello,” and he sounded as though he were tiptoe on one leg on a table top with a mouse glaring up. Dear Ralph.

  “What about it?” I said.

  “What?”

  “Gracie Square.”

  “What?”

  “Gracie Square, that’s what.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Try.”

  Silence.

  “You finished trying?”

  “I didn’t do it.”

  “I’m inclined to believe you.”

  Petulantly he said, “Why?”

  “Because of the bag.”

  “What bag?”

  “Viggy’s bag. The bag you helped pack.”

  “What in damnation does that have to do with it?”

  “It was there. In Madeline Howell’s apartment. But you didn’t come out with it; because I saw you. So someone else was there before you. Which is why I’m inclined to believe you. Inclined. Now what about it?”

  “Thank goodness. I’m upset and I’m frightened. Dreadfully.”

  “All right. Dreadfully. What about it?”

  There was a pause for the licking at lips. “When Pierre Vyseuseau returned from his interview with the police, I told him about your visit. We talked about you. We got around to descriptions. You were Peter Chambers. You were also Barry Drumgoole. I didn’t understand that, and I didn’t like it. I wondered whether you didn’t have a little ax of your own that you were grinding. You didn’t call me for two days. I decided upon some personal snooping. I remembered the name you had snapped at me. Madeline Howell. I checked with the paper and I went visiting. I saw the girl on the floor. I touched her. I felt for a pulse.”

  “The door was open.”

  “It was open when I came. Someone had left in a hurry.”

  “Sit tight,” I said. “Don’t go away.” I hung up.

  I checked with the phone book for Madeline Howell’s newspaper. I asked for Olafson. Olafson was out to eat.

  “About Madeline Howell …?”

  “Olafson,” the guy said. With finality.

  He hung up and I hung up and I slammed out of the phone booth and I walked. I kicked toes along the sidewalks and I shook up all the rattles in my brain and the best I could

  come up with was a frantic desire for an ice-cream soda. Ice-cream soda. Viggy and his satchel and tapestries and crapestries and little guys with diamonds and striperoos from Jersey and a live, eager, vibrant girl like a distorted Cyclops with an agate eye — it was cutting me down to size: small size, about eleven years old and gawky, in a corner drugstore sipping with the straws, ogling, edge-eyed, the platform bosom of the druggist’s daughter dipping down for double scoops.

  I wanted an ice-cream soda.

  I trudged up to Eighty-sixth Street, seeking, and tucked away among the cider stubes and beer dispensaries, I found a soft-drink saloon and I ordered and I got a chocolate soda and with pistachio ice cream with whipped cream in billows out of a bellows, and I was in the middle of the soda and a decision to look in on Marmaduke — when I saw him.

  Pierre Vyseuseau. So help me.

  There were mirrors behind the ice-cream bar and mirrors on the wall beams and a covey of mirrors on top in the angle of slanted ceiling and wall — and they did a periscope job; you could see around the corner, practically. And, looking up, thinking about Marmaduke on Lexington with overtones of deep bosom over double scoops, I saw him, in the surrealistic conglomeration of mirror — Pierre Vyseuseau at the wheel of a cute gray club sedan, parked outside somewhere against a curb.

  I didn’t finish the soda.

  I paid and I went.

  I didn’t know in which direction to look. I looked in all directions like Dorothy Parker casting quips (no relation to the lieutenant out of Homicide) and the best I got was the tail end of something gray turning the corner, downtown.

  Chapter Nineteen

  RAIN, again, put a fierce spray of bubbling mist on the sidewalk in front of Eighty-three Lexington Avenue, and a thin dime was still the key that solved the lock on the lobby floor. I tapped on the door two flights up, front, and I said, “Me, Pete.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Marmaduke said.

  “Peter Chambers.”

  “I am sorry, sir.”

  “Tell Viggy. Mr. O’Shea. Tell him it’s Pete Chambers.”

  “He isn’t here, sir.”

  “Open up.”

  “No, sir.”

  I put my nose close to the crack. “Open up or I yell for cops.”

  It helped. He opened the door against the chain-latch and one eye inspected me. “Oh, sir. It is you.”

  “I.”

  He unhooked the door and he let me in.

  “Hello, Marmaduke.”

  “How do you do, sir. I thank you again for your good offices the other morning.”

  He took my hat and coat and shook them out and put them away to dry. He clicked his tongue against his teeth. “This weather. Preposterous. Rain and rain.”

  “Yeah. Where’s Viggy?”

  “Out, sir.”

  “Where?”

  “I do not know.”

  “How long?”

  “About two hours, sir. Would you care for some coffee?”

  “Thanks, Marmaduke. And gin. A spot. Any gin left?”

  “I believe so.”

  I had gin, and coffee, and Viggy came back.

  He put a key in the door and it rammed against the chain latch and he said, “Hell,” and Marmaduke opened it for him. He had a lot of beard and a dark blue felt over his eyes and a form-fitting dark blue wet topcoat. He looked at me like I was a condolence card with a black border, sadly and grimly and hopelessly.

  “What the hell,” he said. “For all the good you do, you may as well be here. Here, at least, you’re company.”

  He gave his hat and coat to Marmaduke and he opened his jacket over the back of a chair. He growled about the rain and he fluttered his arms and rustled his shirt sleeves. “Humid,” he said. He unhooked a shoulder holster and he put it on the table.

  I pulled it over.

  The gun was tight and short-barreled, a Smith & Wesson

  .38 revolver, I broke it. It had four firm cartridges and two empty chambers. I smelled it. It smelled of leather from the holster and of ancient oil. It smelled of nothing else. I put the shells back and I straightened it out and I put it back in the holster.

  “A real bright gumshoe,” Viggy said.

  Nervously Marmaduke said, “Pardon?”

  “Real bright. First he goes into his trance and he comes up with a beaut that winds me up down here on the lam-out. Then he disappears. Now, he’s here, of all places, smelling my gun.”

  “Would you like some coffee?” Marmaduke inquired.

  “I would like some coffee.” He put a leg over a chair and he sat down across from me and he tilted the chair and he looked at me, fixedly. “You’re real good for me. Like a hole in the head.”

  Faint hiccup of October thunder tapped against the windows. Marmaduke brought his coffee.

  “Where you been?” I
asked Viggy.

  “Who wants to know?”

  I lit up and I put my elbow on the table and my chin in my hand. “Gracie Square?” I murmured. The murmur missed: it came out shriller than sorority noise.

  “What? What’s Gracie Square?”

  “Gracie Square,” I said. “A street. Uptown. Marmaduke tells me you’ve been out for a couple of hours. I’m asking why, and I’m asking if it was Gracie Square.”

  Solemnly he enunciated, “And who the hell are you?”

  He had me there.

  “I’m asking,” I said, with authority. It limped.

  “Union Square,” he said. “I went for a walk. What’s with Gracie Square?”

  He drank his coffee.

  I said, “A girl got killed there.”

  “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “The Little Guy’s girl friend.”

  He put the cup down carefully. “Why?”

  “I don’t know why.”

  He reached over and he pulled me close with an aching table between us — by my nice long Princess Mara tie. “So that’s it. So that’s why you’re smelling guns. So the great goddamn detective, with the whole damn city of New York outside,

  including Gracie Square, winds up in Marmaduke’s walk-up trying to solve his crimes.”

  “Let go.”

  “What?”

  “The tie.”

  He let go. “Look, brother, down here you’re not going to solve any crimes. I don’t feel good and I’m nervous. You can do me a personal favor. You can get the hell out of here.”

  I slid back the chair and I stood up. I was having a very lousy time — I’d been having a very lousy time all the way back since I’d been retained. I was getting bounced around, like a catamaran on a choppy ocean. I was getting abused. I was collecting sutures in my face and thumbs in my pride. I wasn’t enjoying it.

  “Just for the hell of it,” I said. “Why does the gun have four bullets?”

  “You smelled it, didn’t you?”

  “I smelled it.”

  “Then you ought to be satisfied.”

  “Stop,” I said. “A gun can be cleaned. If you have the time.”

  He stood up and he came over and he put his hands on my shoulders, fatherly, like the start of a lecture about the birds and the bees.

  “Detective, this one was cleaned maybe a year ago. Just for the hell of it, I’m telling you. I was in the apartment when I got the call from downtown about how smart that smart idea of yours was. I called the Butcher and I told him where I’d be. Then I packed a grip. In a hurry. I grabbed the gun, looked in, and it was empty. The box had four cartridges, which is why the gun has four cartridges. I didn’t use it and I didn’t kill anybody. Now do me my favor.”

  “What favor?”

  “The favor of kindly getting the hell out of here.”

  Marmaduke brought my hat and coat.

  Viggy sat down at the table and made coffee circles with the bottom of the cup on Marmaduke’s clean tablecloth.

  2

  I walked to the corner toward the beautiful taxicab shimmering in the rain with a halo of lights on the roof and a twinkle of lights on its fenders, and I opened the shining two-tone door and I gathered the skirt of my topcoat around my knees

  in the palace of leather interior with sliding ash trays and tufted armrests and I said, “Waldorf Astoria,” and then I almost choked with pride for him and amazement for me when I read the orange card which proclaimed, “Jackson Tomashefski.”

  “Well….” I said. “Well, well. Coincidence, what?”

  “No coincidence,” he said. “What’s the coincidence, friend? I always hack from that corner. So twice you get me in this neighborhood, so what’s the coincidence?”

  “Waldorf Astoria,” I said. “All I get is lectures.”

  He threw the flag down. “How do you like the new job?”

  “What new job?”

  “The crate. If you want music, just tell me.”

  “I love it. No music.”

  “Set me back four thousand currency bucks.”

  “You own it?”

  “For four thousand currency apples, what do you think? I don’t own it?”

  “Yes. I wasn’t listening. I thought it was a company car. Look, as long as it’s your own car, suppose you stay with me for a while.”

  He sounded unencouraging. “It’s a rainy night. A rainy night is good for business.”

  “I know it. I’ll be making a few stops. I don’t like running around in the rain hoping for taxis.” I took out my wallet. “Suppose we make a deal. Say, twenty bucks. You be my boy for a few hours.”

  He thought about it.

  “Can do,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Can do.”

  “Can do?” I put two tens in his uplifted hand. “Okay, Charlie Chan?”

  “The name,” he said, “is Tomashefski.”

  3

  He let me out on the Lexington Avenue side of the Waldorf and he said, “I’ll be over there with the other crates, by the taxi parking sign,” and I walked through the various lobbies to the elevators and I went up to 1212. I knocked on the door and I said to myself, “What the hell am I doing here, and why, and the guy is probably out in his gray coupé riding around in the rain, scaring people in mirrors.”

  “Who is it?” Pierre Vyseuseau said.

  “Chambers. Drumgoole. Remember?”

  “But yes. If you please.” He opened the door. “I am happy. If you please.” He bowed and he joggled his teeth. He tampered, nervously, with the white Vandyke.

  I got rid of the hat and coat. “Mr. Vyseuseau, I shall be brief.”

  “No. No, no, no, no. You are not, please, typical of the American, I am happy. Not brief. Excuse me. The drink.”

  He went out and I got comfortably ensconced in a square, soft, gold-brocaded lounging chair with a high hassock in front of it and a low telephone beside it. I put my feet up on the high hassock and I took the low telephone into my lap and practically out of habit I dialed the number of Madeline Howell’s newspaper, automatically memorized.

  “Olafson,” I yapped, like you call people names.

  “Just one moment.”

  A man said, “Olafson.”

  “Olafson?” I said.

  “Olafson,” he said.

  “Olafson,” I said. Then my feet went off the hassock. “Oh, Olafson. This is Peter Chambers. I’m calling about Miss Howell.”

  “Peter who is this?”

  “Chambers.”

  “It doesn’t register.”

  “Chambers. Scoffol and Chambers. Peter Chambers.”

  “Oh, oh, yes. How is Mr. Scoffol?”

  “Mr. Scoffol is swell. By any chance, would you know where Madeline Howell is?”

  “By any chance, I certainly do. She ought to be in Moe’s Grotto, if she’s still there. One of her stoolies called in with a wide-open item that was supposed to happen in Moe’s Grotto. I called her at home and I told her. Would you like to leave a message?”

  “How long ago?”

  I waved at the returning Vyseuseau and his bottle of cognac and I smiled, intimately, and I put my feet back on the hassock.

  “Maybe two hours.”

  “Thanks, Olafson.”

  “Message?”

  “No. Thanks.”

  I put the telephone away and I drank Vyseuseau’s cognac. I watched him sit down, stiff in his tuxedo, which is what he’d worn in Viggy’s place. He finished his drink and he dabbed at his bow tie and he put an arm across the back of his chair.

  “Mr. Drumgoole, or Mr. Chambers, it is of true pleasure to have your company. Believe me.”

  I didn’t have the time. I put my glass away near the telephone. I said, “What were you doing up along Gracie Square?”

  He said, “Pardon,” with the weight on the last syllable.

  “Gracie Square. God damn Gracie Square.”

  “Mr. Drumgoole, you were overwrought, Mr.
Chambers.”

  “Mona Crawford. How well do you know Mona Crawford?”

  “Not very well.”

  “But you know her.”

  “Of course I know her.”

  That stopped me.

  He smiled for me, gently, cute as a picture girl in a booby trap. “But of course. It has been my pleasure to attend luncheon at her home only yesterday.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Let’s get untangled. Let’s clear the decks.”

  “Decks,” he said. “It is on a steamboat.”

  “Look, I’m not blaming you and I don’t care. Let’s just get the record straight and go on from there. You and the Little Guy have an arrangement. You employ O’Shea to find the stuff, you tip the midget with the diamonds, he moves in and takes over, and you and he split up two and a half million. That’s the theory, and everybody’s happy — and I really don’t care one way or another, but I’d like to get it straight. Viggy O’Shea makes fifty thousand for being an errand boy, you and the Little Guy pick up about a million and a quarter apiece, and your syndicate is imminently happy. Hunky and dory, huh?”

  He stood up and he brought cognac to me and he added some to his glass and he sat down. I didn’t touch mine.

  “Very clever,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I understand now why you were Drumgoole but really Chambers. It was your thought that I am involved with this Little Person, and you did not wish your name coming back to him too quickly. Is it not?”

  “The hell with that. What about the other thing?”

  “Which?”

  “About you and the Little Guy?”

  “What?”

  “The partnership.”

  “Which partnership?”

  I stood up and I rubbed my hands and I came over to him. “You deny it?”

  “I do not dignify with denial or affirmance.”

  “Like that,” I said.

  He lifted his glass and he sipped and his eyes smiled. “Like that.”

  “Then what the hell were you doing there yesterday?”

  “Ah, sir. You disappoint me. Is it then necessary to be in nefarious partnership with an acquaintance in order to luncheon at the home of the acquaintance — let us say, the betrothed of him?”