Homicide at Yuletide Read online

  “Yes. May I come out of my kitchen now?”

  He laid the cigar away. He raised his hands to his face, only his nose peeking. He slid his fingers down his cheeks, a pinky getting caught in a corner of his mouth. “Yes,” he said. “You may come out of your kitchen now.”

  I moved him gently, and went by him. I left him staring at the denuded version of my scrambled kitchen. “I ought to have my head examined,” I heard him say, “too.”

  I attacked the living-room. I turned the furniture bas ackwards, labels protruding. Labels always protrude from furniture turned bas ackwards. Something about Do not remove, something about it’s brand new and healthful. I went back to the kitchen, rousing the mulling detective from his reverie, and got a knife. I started cutting up the bottom of the furniture. The mulling detective came and watched me, in absolute silence. I ripped up the carpet. I cut open hassocks. I opened the pillows on the couch. I turned the couch over. I opened the bottom of the couch. I took out all of the desk drawers. I pulled books out of the bookcases. I swung pictures off the walls. I dismantled the fireplace. I stood up and looked at the mulling detective and sighed. The mulling detective sighed right back at me. I was getting worried.

  The bell rang and Parker opened the door.

  They came in a bunch, Stella, Terry, Gay, Evelyn, the redhead, the lollipop, the Greek, the diplomat, the beetle-brow. They were rollicking and talkative. They’d been drinking together, they weren’t lit yet, but it was beginning. They were flickering, like gaslight. Glumly, Parker took their things.

  “What is this? A new idea?”

  “What is it? An upside-down party?”

  “Upside-down, you think that’s bad?”

  “Do we stand on our heads, that the motif?”

  “Where are the drinks?”

  “Where the hell’s the cocktail shaker? In the toilet?”

  “Quiet. Qui—et.”

  “Let’s all sit on the floor, what the hell?”

  “You’re nuts. Let’s sit on the ceiling.”

  “Quiet.”

  “What goes?”

  “I’ve got a needle. Who’s got a haystack?”

  “Here’s glasses.”

  “This looks like Scotch.”

  “What are we waiting for?”

  “Let’s sit on the floor.”

  “The ceiling, you dope.”

  “Quiet.”

  There was nothing left but the television—my deluxe, enormous-screen, locked-picture, no-dial, true-sound, no-click, all-wave, non-shimmy, prismatic-color, live-picture, no-glare, no-stare, no-smell, no-jump, no-ghost, no-snow, no-flicker, custom-built, hand-rubbed television. (Or don’t you read the advertisements?) I tipped it, bracing like a virgin against a high wind, but it was too heavy and it toppled, crashing the tube. I cursed and the bell rang. It was Noah. I paid no attention to his doleful additions to the running comment. I used the knife for a screw driver and took off the back panel, and there it was, wrapped in brown paper and adhesive tape, cozy as a cached herring in an igloo. I took it out and bounced it once in my hand.

  “What—?” Parker said.

  “Jools,” I said.

  Nobody else said anything.

  Now Gene Tiny came. Parker opened the door for her. She looked once, and smiled. “All topsy-turvy again,” she said. “Isn’t this where I came in?”

  “And go out,” I said, “in the loving arms of the law, known also as Louis Parker, detective-lieutenant, Homicide.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  I got up off the floor. “Thief and murderer. And there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it.”

  She pulled up tall and I saw she was going to fight.

  “Or is it murderess?” I said.

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  Evelyn Dru said, “I really think he’s crazy, that’s what I think. And I mean it.”

  “Lieutenant,” I said. “If you’ll look in the lady’s bag, you’ll find a set of keys, which are mine, and a pair of glasses, which are hers. You won’t find a gun.”

  “No gun?” somebody said, sniffing.

  “No gun. The lady is sufficiently well-versed in screwed-up details to have gotten rid of the gun. After she shot Grace White.”

  The sharp cackle was a hysterical giggle out of the lollipop. “Hey, we’re having fun,” he said.

  Parker moved now, all cop. “I beg your pardon,” he said. He took her bag and opened it. He brought out the glasses and the keys. No gun.

  “These his keys?” he said.

  “Yes. They’re his keys. I must have picked them up by mistake the other evening. I was returning them—”

  The bell rang again and I opened the door. Potsy broke ground for Barney Bernandino.

  “Punk,” Barney said, grabbing me. “You’re a phony, miserable, dirty little punk, putting me in the middle. I’m gonna—” He saw Parker. He let go of me, and smiled. “Why, good evening, Lieutenant.”

  “You’re going to love this,” I said.

  “Love what?”

  “Shut up and listen.”

  “Audience,” Parker said. “And speech.” He didn’t move from Gene Tiny’s side.

  “She didn’t,” I said, “take those keys by mistake. Not at all. You’ll find a duplicate set in her apartment, positively. She rooted one of those key-makers out and had him do a duplicate job and paid him extra because it’s Christmas. Like that she brings my keys back here tonight, and she’s got a spare set at home. That was before she knew that she’d have to have me knocked off too, that it was getting out of hand….”

  “Wait a minute,” Parker said. “Let’s get organized here.”

  Potsy helped straighten the furniture. Everybody sat down, right side up. Parker sat on the couch next to Gene Tiny. I cut open the brown-paper package and put the stuff on the desk. The bill of sale was there too. An itemized bill of sale from Prince Krapoutsky to Sheldon Talbot.

  Barney said, “Nice work, peeper.”

  “Quiet,” Parker said.

  “Jewels, bejesus,” Potsy said. “I hate them.”

  “What’s that?” Gay said.

  “Jewels, bejesus.”

  “Why?” Gay said.

  “Because if one is bejeweled, bejesus, bejewel them all. Bejeweled, bejesus, for everyone, or bejeweled, bejesus, for none.”

  “Hear!” Gay said.

  “Like that I am what is known as a socialist.”

  “That’s outworn,” said the diplomat.

  “Outworn, hell. The wheel turns, mister. Used to be I was a real red, being a socialist. Then the Commies moved up. Communists, I hate them, always did. So now I’m a real old-fashioned conservative. I’m a socialist. Anybody want to argue politics? Brother, I’m itching to get on my soapbox.”

  “Shut up,” Barney said.

  “Leave him alone,” Gay said. “He’s cute.”

  “You ought to get to know me, lady. There are many faucets to my personality.”

  “This faucet,” Parker said, “is leaking. Turn it off. Come on, Pete. Leave us stay on the story line. It’s your party. Fanfare, and speech.”

  I bowed. In the direction of Gene Tiny. “You want me to tell it, or will you?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Advice first, Miss Tiny. When I’m finished, go with Parker. Because if you have a mind to duck that, Barney here will be waiting for you—somewhere. Between the devil and the deep blue uniforms, take the uniforms. Most of it is circumstantial. Maybe they’ll let you cop a plea. If not, with your legs—”

  “Stay on the story line,” Parker said.

  “You did it, Lieutenant. With one simple word. Cockeyed.”

  “End of prologue,” the Lieutenant said.

  “She got me on to Lorimer Boulevard, because that’s where she wanted me. That’s a quiet little road where the guy was supposed to let me have it, first taking a poke out of her to make it look good. She got me onto that road by saying to me, ‘Look, it says it there. Can’t y
ou read?’ I couldn’t read. It was too far away. And my eyes are perfect. But she certainly couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she’s nearsighted.”

  “How would you know?”

  “You reminded me, Lieutenant, with your one little word. I suddenly recollected my opening talk with her. She had offered me a cigarette and I had shaken it off, pointing to the wall-sign, big red letters, a Fire Department sign. She couldn’t see it. Are you with me, Lieutenant? She had to use her specs to see a No Smoking sign on the far wall of the conversation-room in the pokey. Get it, professor?”

  “It’s beginning to creep up on me.”

  “The pretty ones are all alike.”

  “Philosophy, now.”

  “The pretty ones won’t set those glasses on the bridge of their noses, unless it’s absolutely necessary. Well, Lorimer Boulevard would have been absolutely necessary.”

  “Summing it up,” Parker said. “A plant.”

  “Exactly. She didn’t have to read. She knew that road, and she wanted me on it. If she’d have been driving, she’d have sort of stumbled on it herself. But I was driving. So she had to direct me. It was a deal, all the way around, and I was to catch the dirty end of it. And you cleared it, Lieutenant, with one word.”

  Gene Tiny slumped deeper in the couch. Parker took a look at her and got much more interested in my story. Barney stood up and began to walk.

  Parker said, “Do it from the beginning.”

  “Sure. The conservatives, the good-old-times guys, the Baker Street Regulars, and Irregulars, they have it that the modern private richard is something like palsy on a pogo-stick. He jumps around a lot, he drinks like mad, he gets his brains knocked out, and sometimes he comes up with an answer and sometimes he doesn’t. Well, this one was done strictly with the head. Strictly out of Baker Street.”

  Wearily Parker said, “Audience and speech. But let’s get going.”

  “Okay, she’s a private detective. It’s a funny business. Either you’re one of the few on top, or you’re sniveling around on two-bit deals. There’s no in-between. She found that out. Once the glamour got wiped off, she found out she’d have done better being a model. She was getting desperate, when this deal popped.”

  “That’s a guess,” Parker said.

  “Sure it’s a guess, but it dovetails, if you’ll let me.”

  “I’m letting you.”

  “She gets hired by Barney Bernandino to trace down Sheldon Talbot, who’s supposed to be dead in Chicago, but ain’t. Sheldon is supposed to have put one over on Barney on a deal involving jewelry worth about a half million bucks.”

  “Supposed to,” Barney said. “Why, the—”

  “Barney, it seems, lent him money.”

  “Lent him,” Barney said, “hell. I—”

  “I’ll give you all of those details, Louis, when I talk to your stenographer downtown. Sheldon made a purchase from Prince Krapoutsky. Sheldon then blows for Chicago, because he’s in trouble with Barney. Sheldon’s scared stiff. He’s loaded down with this jewelry that he bought from Prince Krappie, and he can’t get rid of it because he’s afraid of tipping Barney. He kills a man, Fred Thompson, and takes over his identity. Those details, too, will be furnished downtown. She rounds up Sheldon and arranges for him to come into town and do a transaction with Barney.”

  “What kind of transaction?”

  “A business deal.”

  “What kind of business deal?”

  “Involving the jewelry. But right about then, I’d say, ideas begin to take shape. If she can work one out, if she can do a perfect cover-up, she can wind up with the whole bagful of jewels, and nobody will be looking for her, not even Barney. She can dispose of the pieces, bit by bit, Mexico, South America, Europe, and in time, she can be set up sweetly. And not like Sheldon Talbot. Not hounded.”

  “All right,” Parker said. “Let’s get down to cases.”

  “You see that place down there? Thirteenth Street?”

  “I did.”

  “Looked like a whirlwind hit it, but the guy’s laid out clean and neat. Landlady’s there all day, but she doesn’t hear a sound. Strictly a frame job. Did you boys get that?”

  “We’d have come to it.”

  “All right. I get hired by her to go up there to tell the guy that she’s in jail, that he’ll have to mark time. Why me?”

  “Because I picked you,” Parker said. “That’s why.”

  “Exactly. Because the somebody you’d recommend would be somebody you had confidence in. That somebody was going to fix the time on those two watches, the wrist watch and the electric one, and it would be kosher, you’d believe what he’d tell you—you, or anyone else in the Department. That figured to be the time of death, and it was important that it be fixed good—because she was in jail at that time, and where’s there a better place to be when somebody’s being murdered on Thirteenth Street?”

  “So?”

  “There are things that hit you that you don’t figure, until it jells. For instance, that door was open. Why? Here’s a door with a key and a lock and an extra snap-lock. Here’s a guy hiding out, probably keeping that big forty-five near and ready, yet the key’s on the inside of the lock, the door’s open, and the snap-lock is clicked back. It bothered me without my knowing it was bothering me. Now we know why. She wanted to make it easy for me to get in.”

  “All right. For God’s sake. Do it straightaway.”

  “Okay.” I took a cigarette, sat Barney down, and I started walking. “She says he called her yesterday morning. That’s a lie. He called her before that. She may have seen him previously, but she certainly saw him the day before yesterday. She spent most of the day with him, and most of the night. She probably slept over with him. She wanted to know just where that package was, and she found out just where it was. During the evening, they dropped into a neighborhood night club.”

  “Eddie Nuki’s?”

  “Of course. She must have tried, but she just couldn’t stop that from happening. She goes back with him, sleeps over, gets him in the right frame of mind. He’s going to have visitors in the morning. She waits that out. Then she goes up to Barney Bernandino. ‘Our man just called me,’ she says between Martinis. ‘He’s ready to make the deal. I’m going down now to talk with him.’ She goes back down there, shoots him, waits in silence, hoping that one shot would be mistaken for an explosion in the street, backfire, something. If not, well, I shot a guy in self-defense, and she’d still stand good with Barney, because then her whole scheme would be up in the air, and she’d turn the stuff over to him, and he’d save fifty thousand bucks, and maybe even add a little something to her fee.”

  “All right,” Parker said. “Don’t start straying.”

  “She’s lucky. It works. Nobody inquires. Then she messes up the room, sets the clocks ahead, one at one-ten and one at one-thirty. There’s no reason for that, the discrepancy, except that the electric clock was probably running twenty minutes ahead of the wrist watch, and maybe somebody had noticed that, and she wanted everything in status quo. That’s also a guess, but I’ll bet on it.”

  “Go on.”

  “She’s careful, of course, about fingerprints. She’s been careful about fingerprints every time she’s been there. Okay. Now she’s in a hurry. She can’t have too much time elapse from when she leaves Barney’s to the time she gets picked up in the traffic jam. How’m I doing, Genie?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “She leaves the gun, picks up the package, sticks it into her handbag, gets out of there, drives back uptown, turns the car downtown, and runs into that Chevvie after getting the cop on her tail for speeding. Maybe, all told, a half hour disappears somewhere, but who’s checking the time? Not Barney. Nobody. Look what all that explains.”

  “What?” Parker said.

  “She’s doing seventy miles an hour on the East Side Highway. Purpose? To be arrested. She doesn’t stop for the motorcycle cop. Why? Same reason. She c
rashes that Chevvie. Why? Same reason. She gives lip to the cop. Why? To make sure. No driver’s license. Why? To make doubly sure. She pays me five hundred bucks for the job. Cash. Who’s got five hundred bucks in a wallet, unless it’s there for a preconceived purpose? Not a broken-down would-be lady shamus. And she’s got the wallet. It has her identification, it even has her P.I.’s license. Then where’s the driver’s license? Not in the wallet. Why? Because she made sure that it wasn’t there. She wants to be arrested. Check?”

  “Check.”

  “Okay. So now she gets sprung. Now we come to the good part. She still has that hot package in her purse. She hasn’t had an opportunity to dispose of it. She gets out of jail, where is she?”

  “Where?”

  “With me. Right from being with me, one of Barney’s boys picks her up. Then she’s up by Barney, with the old knapsack right beside her. Then she’s with me again, coming down to my apartment. My place has been given the old heave-ho by a couple of Barney’s searchers, just in case. Sooner or later, we decide, they’ll look her place over, just for the hell of it. She’s got the stuff, right on her. Where to put it, for the moment, until the heat simmers down? Right here. Right here in the joint that’s already been looked over. I get called out by Barney, and she plants it.”

  “How did you know?” Parker said.

  “Baker Street, my boy. I didn’t know. I didn’t know until you said the magic word, cockeyed. Once I had her pegged, I added it, I used the old Baker Street head. Where would she put it? Yesterday, she couldn’t even get to a bank vault, by the time we got out of Barney’s it was far too late, and today’s Christmas. And my keys just don’t get up and waltz away, all by themselves, not when I distinctly remember putting them right here on the table.”