Homicide at Yuletide Read online

  “I bet it is,” said the ermine wrap.

  “Name’s Cochrane,” said the top hat, sticking his hand out. “Noah Cochrane. The lady with the husbands and friends is Gay, my wife, Mrs. Cochrane.”

  “I’m Evelyn Dru,” said the ermine wrap.

  “Peter Chambers,” I said. “I’ll take your things.”

  The ladies unsheathed, and arms, shoulders, backs and breasts writhed into view. The ladies quickly swished to the silver bar. Cochrane helped me hang the things away. He put his top hat on the shelf of the closet and hung his coat and white scarf over a hanger. He shrugged his tails into position. “You coming to our party, Mr. Chambers?”

  “Maybe, I hope.”

  “Hope so too.”

  He was a big boy, about fifty, with powerhouse shoulders, and a short-stepped muscular walk. He had a red, set, sandy face that looked like it needed a good deal of shaving to keep it smooth. He was round-bald on top, brown hair clipped close around it in a monk’s haircut, open slightly in front, like a squeezed-together horseshoe. He had a thick nose with round nostrils and light eyes under dark slowly moving bulbous lids. His neck was red over the stiff white collar.

  “One for me too,” he said, going to the ladies.

  I rubbed my hands, found a cigarette, and sat down.

  Evelyn Dru wriggled raised fingers. “Peter? What about you, Peter?”

  “Scotch and water for Peter,” Stella called from the bedroom. “And handed to him, straight-arm.”

  “What do you expect?” Evelyn called back. “That I sit on him, and administer it in little squirts?”

  “Wouldn’t put it past you, Mother dear.”

  “Don’t call me Mother dear.”

  “Don’t mess with my boy friend.”

  “Not Mother dear. Mother dear doesn’t mess.” She brought it to me and held my arm with one hand and touched her knee to my knee and whispered, “Not much I don’t.” She smiled and left the glass in my hand and went back to the bar for her own.

  “Here we go again,” said Noah Cochrane.

  Evelyn Dru said, “Go where?”

  “Round and round on the old carrousel. Snatching for the new man, like he was a special diamond-encrusted gold ring.”

  “Stinks,” said Gay.

  “What?” said Noah.

  “The simile. You do much better when you write those ghoulish ads for burning people up when they’re dead.”

  “Well, you get what I mean, I hope.”

  “I do. Except you can dis-include me.”

  “You slipping?” said Evelyn Dru.

  “No. But I’m out of contention, handicapped by the presence of friend husband. Which is one handicap that, shortly, will be surmounted.”

  “Now it’s friend husband,” Cochrane said. “Now we’re all tossed into the same bin. Ah, consistency. Thy name is Gay Cochrane.”

  She whirled in her billowy evening gown and took a bow. Gay Cochrane. Tall. Taller because of a crown of braided up-do set in gleaming combs, dark-skinned and slender with shining white teeth. Her face was a triangle pointing to a small chin, and when she wasn’t smiling, her lips were thin and there were jumpy knots in the corners of her jaw. Her eyes were brown, quick-moving, questioning. She was a shade too slender, wide-shouldered and tapering down. The dress fixed that. It was ivory white with no top, beginning in a tight hoop over small breasts and under her armpits, body-close taut to the hips, and then swirling out in a foam of spangles.

  Not Evelyn Dru. Evelyn Dru had what to show, and Evelyn Dru showed it.

  Her dress was less dress than any dress I had ever seen. Pink. Pink and simple and starting nowhere and ending nowhere but blending with the pink of her flesh and showing all of her, and where it didn’t show, any imagination limping on one mongoloid cylinder could imagine, and without any imagination, that wouldn’t matter either. In back it was no dress all the way to the base of the spine, a smooth back, soft velvet over bones, and in front it was more dress, but not much more, and from there it clung like a drunk to his last drink come closing time.

  Evelyn Dru was blond, bouncy, ever-smiling and arch, graceful and shapely, with a small mouth, a smaller nose, and blue eyes that lifted you out of your seat like a national anthem.

  “Snow,” said Noah Cochrane at the window. “It’s really flaking.”

  “White Christmas,” Gay said. “We don’t have them as frequently any more. Do you think the climate’s changing?”

  “Small talk,” Evelyn said. “I hate small talk, and I hate it more when it’s about the weather.”

  “Go sulk,” Gay said. “Go sulk on the blue divan. You’ll look good sulking on the blue divan.”

  Noah said, “Easy, cats. Drink and you’ll get merry.” He came and sat beside me. “I wish you’d come to our party.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Evelyn said, “No party of your own?”

  “Nobody loves me.”

  “We’ll cure that,” Gay said. “If you’ve never moved in neurotic circles, mister, you’re moving now. Everybody loves everybody, but we break it up for an unattached man—we all concentrate on him.”

  “Who said he’s unattached?” Stella came from the bedroom, tangy with a perfume like faint incense, in a dress that worked a multiple double-take on all of us.

  “Murder,” Noah Cochrane said, nudging me.

  She was a picture, built like she was built, standing there looking back at us, white of face, motionless in the black dress, an embroidered red dragon writhing across her middle like a snake. It was a chiaroscuro in venery—but she smiled right through it. She wore nothing but the black dress; a bright ring exploded off the little finger of her left hand; nothing else. It was Chinese, without a fold, enmeshing her body, every line showing, slit up the sides of her legs, bare arms, jeweled shoes, and the bright ring on her finger. Simple, straight, it was black nakedness; examining her, she was more fully clothed than either of the other women.

  “Likee?” she said.

  “Lovee,” Evelyn said. “Where in all hell did you capture that?”

  “I made it, from a Chinese gown I bought.”

  “Murder,” Noah Cochrane said.

  “I’ve been saving it,” Stella pointed at me, “for him. He doesn’t like eighteen-year-olds.”

  “When’d you meet him?” Evelyn said.

  “Today.”

  Gay said, “See? She’s been saving it.”

  Stella’s smile closed down to a wet pout. “Doesn’t like eighteen-year-olds.”

  “He’s crazy,” Noah said. “Or he’s a liar.”

  I drank my drink in a hurry.

  “Don’t blame him,” Evelyn said. “I don’t blame him in the least.”

  “You wouldn’t, Mother dear. Nobody going to make me a drink?”

  Noah stood up and lumbered across to the silver bar. He mixed a drink for Stella, gave it to her, talked to me. “How about dinner? Have dinner with us, Chambers.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t.”

  Stella said, “Coax him, please, somebody.”

  “The least you can do,” Gay said, “is promise to come to our party.”

  “Thanks. You’re all very nice.”

  “He knows Gene Tiny,” Stella said.

  “Nice?” said Evelyn. “I don’t know. There are motives behind Gay’s gay talk.”

  “Anything wrong with my motive?” Gay said.

  Evelyn said, “He looks pretty good to me.”

  “He knows Gene Tiny,” Stella said.

  Gay lifted her glass high. “Congratulations. For nothing. No wonder the lad’s reluctant. Gene Tiny. Party of your own, Mr. Chambers?”

  “Not with Gene Tiny,” Noah said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because she’s coming to our party.”

  “True. True enough. Everybody’s coming to our party. It’s going to be a wonderful party. A wonderful, wonderful party.”

  Noah took the drink out of her hand. “You need food, sister.”

>   “Whatever I need, brother, you can’t give it to me. And even if you can, I don’t want it.”

  Evelyn Dru said, “Save the family squabbles for home.”

  “Got no home,” Gay said. “Got nothing. Got misery. Got emptiness.”

  Stella came, mince-walked, elbows back, drink in hand. “Promise?”

  I said, “I can’t be sure.”

  “Please promise.”

  “If I can at all, I’ll come.”

  “Now that’s what I call a promise,” Gay said.

  “That Stella,” Evelyn said. “When she pitches, she pitches.”

  Cochrane went to the bar. “Gather round, kiddies. Last drink.”

  We waited until Cochrane finished pouring. Then we clinked glasses, warm in the room, glowing, hothouse smell of perfume and sweat, shoulders shining, eyes bright within the crinkle of smiles, bright eyes telling nothing to anybody, a warm huddle in a red room clinking glasses to Christmas. Who knew of a sprawled man sleeping on an old floor, edge of broken bone sharp-white over one eye? Who knew of a man in a clean white unmussed shirt, and pressed plaid pants, and a wine-red beard, and dry blood like rust on a yellow face without a forehead?

  I looked at Stella. Stella was looking at me.

  “Merry Christmas,” everybody said.

  We lunged into our coats, everybody helping everybody. Stella clicked off the lights. We crowded into the elevator, and Gay Cochrane found my hand and squeezed it behind Evelyn’s ermine, and I squeezed back, and we made love like that for eleven flights of the Tamara Towers, and then the elevator man slid his door back, his lips dry and caked with all day nips from the neighbors. “A Merry Christmas to all of yez, folks, and a good Christmas, and ‘tis a white one too.”

  “White Christmas,” said the man at the switchboard.

  Outside, snow fell in soft cotton flakes. A car moved up, white-patched. A chauffeur in uniform came out, holding a bear rug. “Real good snow,” he said. “White Christmas.”

  They ran across to the car, and the last was Stella. “Don’t disappoint me,” she called. “It’s the Somerset. The Talbot suite.”

  Cochrane stuck his head out. “Still time to change your mind. Dinner?”

  “No, thanks.”

  The doorman slammed the door, the chauffeur shifted gears, and they rolled. The doorman came back, opening his greatcoat to pocket his tip. “Swell snow. Can I get you a cab, sir?”

  “Please.”

  He used his whistle and he took my dollar (Ah, Christmas) and I climbed into the cab and I yelled White Christmas at the driver just one fragment of a second before he yelled it at me. He turned his head and grinned. “Tell you the truth, for business, it smells. Not too many people on the streets tonight.”

  “Central Park South, by Sixth.”

  “Coming at you.”

  White Christmas. In New York it is one day of silent snow and constant comment, and days and days of slush and flood and high-laced boots and slowed traffic and broken ankles and strewn garbage and blocked roads and broken mains and photos of cops who delivered babies and tenement fires with dripping icicles and heart attacks and heightened discourtesies.

  Everybody looks forward to White Christmas.

  I sat back on worn leather, digesting whisky, until the driver said, “Fifty-Ninth and Sixth.”

  I went up to my apartment thinking in mixed patterns of a long shower and lounging nude and listening to music and going to sleep and waking refreshed and going to a party. I put the key in my door, but my door did not need a key, and for the second time in one day, I walked into an apartment that looked like a slice of cyclone had channeled through.

  I smiled politely at a small man with a weary face, waving my fingers as I went by. I disregarded the grinning man with the bent homburg on the back of his head. I went to the bedroom and then to the kitchen. My entire apartment had been given a shuffle, from the cover of the tea kettle in the kitchen to a set of books on anthropology stored in a hatbox in the bedroom closet. I came back to my tilted living-room.

  “Rough guess, I’d say you guys were looking for something.”

  Jocularity wailed like the end of a scream. I coughed, adjusting my voice.

  “Yeah,” the man in the bent homburg said.

  I pointed to the overturned television. “That’s new.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was it necessary?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Find anything?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to try some place else?”

  “We tried. You ought to see your office.”

  The small man with the weary face sitting on a corner of my oblique sofa looked up from the gun in his limp hands.

  “We were careful, bo. Nothing’s spoiled.”

  “Thanks. Wouldn’t you like to run along now?”

  “Don’t take your coat off,” the weary man said.

  “Fred Thompson,” I said. “The way this joint is joggled up, it reminds me of Fred Thompson.”

  “I heard about that. That was two other guys. Barney wants to see you.”

  “You know what Barney can do?”

  “Barney?”

  “Barney can go and—”

  “We been waiting a long time,” the man with the bent homburg said. “Where the hell you been?”

  “I was practicing at Fred Thompson’s.”

  “What?”

  “Setting up furniture straight.”

  “A cutie, huh?” He lifted a thumb to the homburg, setting it farther back. He was very big, coming at me, grinning.

  The weary man said, “Slow down, Hook.”

  “A cutie,” Hook said. “Mamma, how I love a cutie.” I smelled garlic from his mouth as he stood there near me. His big teeth were yellow. His face had blond bristles. A point of flat yellow hair showed under the pushed-back homburg. His forehead was white, enamel-white, no pores, sick shiny tight-white without wrinkles.

  The weary man said, “Let’s do it nice, fella. It’s Christmas time.”

  “A cutie,” Hook said. “A wise-guy type cutie. Oh, how I love a cutie.”

  “Don’t touch him,” the weary man said.

  Hook turned and grabbed my coat lapels, his grin jutting, bloodstreaks in his dirty eyes. He pulled, and I lifted my knee, and he grunted, gasping, his big face bending to me, the grin wider. I pushed two fists into the grin, together, jumping a little, like a cheer leader asking for more noise. He went over sidewise, the homburg falling, straight yellow hair lank over the sides of his face, over his ears, cleaving a ragged part in the middle of his scalp. He didn’t go all the way. He lay out, raised from the floor on the heels of his shoes, one arm rigid behind him. For a moment I had the hysterical impression that he was going to break out into one of those Russian heel-dances. Then he started to move, over and on to his knees, and then up, the grin massive-wide now, a rotten black back-tooth showing, his lips puffy and pale. He came, staggering, chuckling in a cough, his right hand, a claw of flesh, stuck out in front of him.

  “Don’t touch him,” the weary man said.

  “Don’t tell me what to do with this son of a bitch of a cutie. Don’t tell me.”

  The scream and the rap of the gun came together, the scream seemingly louder. Then Hook was waving blood from his hand. The weary man sighed.

  “He’s crazy,” Hook yelled, shaking the hand, splattering blood. “He’s off his cruller.”

  “Let’s look,” I said.

  He held it out to me, like the young lady modestly boasting about the size of her engagement ring. The bullet had gone through his hand.

  “It’s not too bad,” I said. “Stop with the hollering.”

  “Listen, mister,” Hook said. “Look out. That guy’s crazy. He’s nuts, I tell you.”

  The weary man brought out a handkerchief. “Tie it for him, will you, fella?”

  I tied the handkerchief bandage-flat across the palm. I used my handkerchief, rolled to loop, and tied that tight ov
er his wrist.

  “Crazy,” Hook said.

  “All right,” I said. “What now?”

  The weary man came off the corner of my couch. He was small and very slender in a long blue buttoned double-breasted coat. He wore a blue snap-brim felt hat square on his head without a slant. He looked like a scholar, deep lines on a thin white face, like a briefcase carrier out of a foreign embassy, except it was a gun he was carrying, not a briefcase, pointing it nowhere, hanging limp, a part of his hand. “It’s like I said before. Let’s do it nice, fella. Barney wants to see you. Let’s go, huh?”

  We went. Hook drove the big limousine with one hand. The weary man and I sat in back. Snow drifted in a thick curtain.

  We stopped in front of the Kitten House on Eighty-Ninth and we used the private elevator to the top floor. Hook held his hand behind him with a brave look of patient suffering like a shy hero after an act of rescue. “How’s it feel?” I asked.

  He lifted a mild eyebrow. He was beginning to like it. “Nothing,” he said off-hand. “Numb.”

  The elevator jerked open to a black carpeted foyer. A large man took our hats and coats and we stamped snow off our shoes. The large man was Potsy, a man I knew, ex-fighter, ex-entertainer, who had attached himself, early, to Barney.

  “Hi, Pete.”

  “Hi, Potsy.”

  “Hi, fellers.”

  The foyer led to an immense room, all black carpeted. A glittering chandelier shed a soft light. The walls were prison gray with black and white pictures. Furniture that would have cluttered three rooms was frugal in the lush vastness. A striped gold and gray draw curtain covered one wall. In front of that was a long black leather desk and a wide black leather swivel chair. Barney Bernandino was slumped down in the swivel chair, casual as a boy in a summer canoe waiting for the fish to bite. A tall drink in a monogrammed glass sat on a round gold coaster on the black desk.

  “Glad you could come, Peter.”

  “Nice of you to ask me, Barney.”

  Gene Tiny was in a far corner of the room in a gold tufted easy chair, her pocketbook beside her, a drink in her hand, and her feet up, shoeless on a black hassock.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “I’m sorry I got you into this, Mr. Chambers.”

  “Pete.”

  “Sorry, Pete.”