Armchair in Hell (Prologue Books) Read online

  He hitched one side of his thin behind onto the rim of the pool table and he made a cane of his cue and he leaned on it. “All right,” he said, “sucker. What gives?”

  “What?”

  “Look. I like a guy what pays for what he buys. So you’re all paid up. Five C’s. Now, what are you buying? You did not come here to play pool with Crying-Towel Reed. Not you.”

  I put my cue on the table and I rolled it between my fingers. “Well,” I said, “it’s about a bet I made.”

  “A bet about what?”

  “Who.”

  “What?”

  “I mean it’s a bet about a who; not a bet about a what.”

  “So it’s a bet about a who. So what?”

  “About the Little Guy.”

  He got off the pool table. He laid his cue-stick alongside

  mine. He went and sat on the icebox for the colas. He said, “Maybe we ought to not talk about it, huh?”

  “It’s nothing,” I said.

  “Look. If it’s nothing and I can help, I am glad to help. But it has got to be nothing.”

  “It’s about if the Little Guy is a nancy.”

  Some of the stiffness went out of his face. “What?” he said.

  “A fruit, a milky way, a buttercup; the Little Guy.” Now he laughed. “Heh, heh. All right. So it’s about nothing. Which side you on?”

  “I’m on the side that says he isn’t.”

  “Then you win. That other guy is nuts. But nuts. The Little Guy,” he said slowly. “Horny, that dwarf, horny like a tadpole.”

  Mildly I said. “But for what?”

  “For the dollies, that is for what. And strictly. He would bump a whore in Havana, that guy, if he had the time. The Little Guy a nance; you go collect your dough from the guy. And if he don’t want to pay, that’s a job for me, pal.”

  I shook my head. “You ought to be able to do better than that. For a pal.”

  “How?”

  “You can give me something concrete.”

  “Concrete,” he said, “you pour on a stiff so he makes a splash in the river.”

  “I mean a sure-pop something. Something specific. Like if he had a girl friend.” (Subtle, that Chambers.)

  “Specific,” he said. “Yeah. Specific. Well, specific, he’s got a dolly up there in Denny O’Shea’s Utopia Ballroom, which is his apple-pie. But specific.”

  “A sweetheart?”

  “What else is apple-pie, a mortal enema?”

  “Enemy.”

  “Enemy, I mean.”

  “You don’t make sense, pal.”

  “Don’t get smart, sucker.”

  “Listen. If the Little Guy has a sweetheart, a real sweet sweetheart, it doesn’t make sense that she works as a hostess in the Utopia.” I smirked for him, real lecherous. I hoped. “Sweethearts don’t work.”

  He considered that. He nudged a knuckle at a nostril, sniffed, got out a handkerchief and blew. “You’re a big enough

  boy to know,” he said, “that all dames is bats. Maybe that’s the way this one wants it.”

  “Name?”

  “What?”

  “What’s her name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You ever see her?”

  “You bet. Out of this world. But gorgeous. Tall, dark, and bitchy. But bitchy. Momma.”

  I totaled up what I owed him for the Chicago and I brought out my wallet and I gave him five of Madeline Howell’s crisp one-hundred-dollar bills. He took them and slid them into his pants pocket and he wagged his head.

  “I told you,” he said, “because why shouldn’t I? It’s about nothing, and nobody never told me it’s a secret. But, a little bit, if I was you, I would not mess with that tomato. Because, a little bit, that way, you would only be drumming up business for me, which would be oke by me on one side, but on the other side it would be just too bad because you are a nice young feller. Catch?”

  “Catch,” I said. I got my hat and I got my head into it. “But how come? You still work for him? What would you have to do with it?”

  “Piecework, I would have to do with it. I am what you call an independent constructor, or contractor. Something. I am not on nobody’s pay roll, if you know what I mean. I am Cry, the businessman. There is more in it that way.”

  I looked at the cool, empty cavern of a poolroom. ”This business doesn’t look so good, for Cry the businessman. Don’t you ever have customers?”

  He scrubbed a hand over his burr haircut. “I got a lousy reputation. And I close up suddenlike, all kinds of crazy hours, when I get a hurry-up phone call. No customers. Maybe, once in a while, a couple kids.”

  “I get it,” I said. “So long and thanks.”

  “Thank you. For the donation, sucker. So long. Don’t let them push you around. In a revolving door. Good, huh?”

  It figured for no customers. A nice little man like Crying-Towel Reed figured for no customers, no friends, no anybody. Not Crying-Towel Reed: he figured to be a very lonesome little man.

  Lonesome as an outhouse on a prairie.

  Chapter Eight

  I BOUGHT a newspaper and I flagged down a cab. I told him to take me to Rockefeller Plaza, where are the offices of Scoffol and Chambers. I looked through the newspaper for a story about three cadavers without clothes on a stationary joy ride in a parked car by the river. There was no story. I threw the newspaper out of the window, which is a crime in New York City. I thought, hungrily, about going to sleep.

  Scoffol and Chambers.

  I ducked beneath the scratchy, august sniff of my estimable secretary, Miss Miranda Foxworth, and I went through and I knocked on Scoffol’s door. Scoffol said, “Come in,” and I went in and he looked up from his papers and he said, “The roving detective; you look like the wrath,” and he went back to his papers.

  I didn’t take my hat or coat off. I moved in on a red leather easy chair and I stuffed my hands into my coat pockets and I closed my eyes.

  Scoffol and Chambers: Scoffol is short and round and beet-faced with short-chopped white hair, parted down the middle; small legs, little feet, short back, and short stomach, circular and comfortably nudging the vest buttons. I’m another kind of guy. I’m a long one with a clarkie mustache, six feet two, sort of raw-boned with big shoulders (or I get a new tailor). Scoffol is the boulder; I am the phosphorescent glimmer. You can wipe the glimmer off the boulder. You cannot budge the boulder, not a real bouldery boulder. Not without a derrick.

  I was dreaming, sort of, about a blonde with a boulder for buttocks with phosphorescent glimmerings being chased around by a couple of insurance-company vice-presidents, when Scoffol woke me. “You’ve been sleeping and groaning for half an hour. Maybe you have things to do, or maybe you ought to go home and sleep.”

  “Things to do,” I said. “First thing, right from here. I’ve got to go over and pick up a seventy-five-hundred-dollar fee from Dennis O’Shea.”

  “Who is Dennis O’Shea?”

  “Viggy O’Shea’s brother.”

  “Who is Viggy O’Shea?”

  “Viggy O’Shea, dear patrician, is one hell of a fine client. One of the best.”

  Scoffol pulled out a pipe and lit it and went back to his chair behind the desk and he said, “All right. Start telling me.”

  “How do you know, detective?”

  “Because you’re not coming into my room to sit in a red chair and sleep. You were trying to be polite, or hard to get.”

  I told him.

  There was a lot of blue smoke in the room before he told me.

  “Bango,” he said. “Three characters defunct. Boom. Just like that. But three, no less.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Impossible.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Impossible.”

  “And screamingly sensational. You haven’t been chewing hashish?”

  “Herring,” I said. “Not hashish. I’m a herring hound. From smörgasbord to Arnold Reuben — once a day every day — herring. What e
lse?”

  “Bizarre.”

  “Bizarre. Now you’ve got a good one. Good and bizarre, but also good and dead and clammy. Three of them, bang, just like that — but idiot imprecations don’t alter the sensational, bizarre, impossible facts. So tear yourself away from the heavy-money investigatorial duties and deliver yourself of a viewpoint.”

  He clicked the pipe on his teeth. “I’m sorry,” he said and he smiled. “Spell Viggy O’Shea for me.”

  “Viggy O’Shea. Rich and handsome. He owns five of the grade-?, number-one gambling casinos in choice spots throughout the country. I’ve known him since he was a boy. He is my very best client. This is characteristic: every time there’s the faintest rumble of trouble, he goes chasing around the town for me. And he’s a big shot. The hot-shots know all about Viggy and his eternal chase of his gum-shoe savior, and they laugh about it. But Viggy knows what he’s doing. He’s playing along with the percentages, which he’s done all his life. He can’t go to the cops, he can’t afford to mix with the law except to pay it off not to bother his business — but there is always a section of the law, top or bottom, gunning for him, personally; so when there’s trouble, right away, he goes out on the town looking for me; and I say he’s right. I’ve steered him clear for years.”

  “And I hope he’s been paying for it.”

  “Through the nose, and gladly. Check your books sometime.”

  “What’s the Viggy for? That can’t be a name.”

  “No. His name is John James O’Shea. He’s a graduate accountant that couldn’t make a living at it. He went from dice boy in Florida, to croupier in Reno, to handicapper for Armstrong — and then when he’d saved a few, he opened his own little place. ‘Viggy’ comes from ‘vigorisch.’ ‘Vigorisch’ is a gambler’s term which means percentage. There’s percentage in running an honest gambling establishment. When he started, he’d cut a piece of the game; and he himself didn’t gamble. You can make a lot of money that way. He made it. Now he doesn’t cut his games. He operates a new way. He caters only to the best. He charges one hundred dollars a smash, entrance fee. If you want food or drink, you pay like it was rubles. For that he supplies the equipment and the protection and the assurance that there is no cheating and there are no shills. He’s got the best reputation around the country. An honest game comes high, and a gambler is damn willing to pay for that.”

  Scoffol knocked the stuffing out of his pipe and he got up and he came around and he stood in front of me. “Take off your hat and coat,” he said. “My God.”

  I didn’t move. I said, “Any suggestions?”

  “Two. Number one: what about Viggy?”

  “What about Viggy?”

  “Is it conceivable that Viggy turned this trick and then hires you to figure out the cover-up?”

  “Why?”

  “So that he can have the full sale price for the tapestries, rather than only the agent’s commission.”

  Moodily I said, “But it is already established that he couldn’t get at a private sale what Vyseuseau would pay him as his commission.”

  “Correction,” Scoffol said. “That isn’t established. That is merely what Vyseuseau told him. Perhaps your Viggy found out different.”

  I let that rattle around in my head for a couple of minutes. Then I said, “No good. That way, we could expect a dead

  Mr. Hale. We would not also have a dead Charlie Batesem, and a dead naked woman in bed.”

  Scoffol went back to the chair behind his desk. “All right, it was a thought. Suggestion two: what about Vyseuseau? His syndicate authorizes him to pay two million bucks to buy the stuff, plus a half million to an agent. A chap needn’t have more than an iota of no-good to try to cut himself in on a slice of that.”

  “Yes.” I nodded. “I like that much better.”

  “I like that much better too.”

  “It would explain why Vyseuseau knew that Algernon Hale was murdered. It might also explain the dead Charlie Batesem, since Charlie was bodyguarding the job. It would not explain our strange dead lady. But we can’t expect to have everything explained, not just sitting around talking: a couple of bright detectives batting fungoes at each other.”

  “All right,” Scoffol said. “Let’s rule Viggy out and concentrate on Vyseuseau. Do you see that Little Guy mixed up in it? As I do?”

  I was excited. “Exactly. You make the speech. If it jibes with the way I’ve been thinking all along, then I think we’ve got something.”

  “Sure. Here’s the speech. Vyseuseau gets to the Little Guy with his idea of dropping the word around about the tapestries. The Little Guy hears him out and then he tells him that he’s not the man for that. Why? Because the right kind of people do not patronize his type of establishment. They sit around. They chat around. They get acquainted. Perhaps they see each other a few times, and then Mr. Little Guy comes up with a very good idea. Sure, use Viggy O’Shea. His clientele is correct for the dropping-of-the-word-around. And five gaming houses at strategic points throughout the country. But he tells him to keep in touch with him, the Little Guy. If the tapestries should turn up, then Vyseuseau is to get in touch with him, to tell him where and when, and he takes over thereafter. With that setup, it explains how Vyseuseau knew Hale was murdered. He had notified the Little Guy that the bag was delivered, and the Little Guy had taken over, in his own fashion. The further arrangements between Vyseuseau and the Little Guy would be simple. When the situation smooths over, a dummy turns up with the tapestries, Vyseuseau makes the purchase, and he and the Little Guy split the purchase price.

  A million dollars each. That, as David Dodge once said, ain’t hay. Plus the agent’s commission.”

  I got up and I reached over the desk and we shook hands. “Check. Perfect. I think we can use that as the basic premise. Something like that. Good-by, now.”

  “Good-by, and get some sleep. Come over to my hotel tonight and we’ll kick it around some more. You still have your dead lady in bed; plus the complication of the interest evidenced by Madeline Howell.”

  “Those,” I said, “will require good old stumble-around detection, rather than sharp-Scoffol deduction.”

  “Sharp-Scoffol, my eye. You had that figured. You just let me say it for corroboration. We’ll rehash it.”

  “Not tonight.”

  “Tonight,” I said, “I’m going dancing.”

  “Wh-a-a-t?”

  “Dancing. You know, like a punch-drunk fighter with a hotfoot.”

  His eyebrows soared like fresh-flushed quail.

  I didn’t wait for them to settle down.

  2

  Denny O’Shea’s Utopia Ballroom wasn’t Denny O’Shea’s Utopia Ballroom although everybody called it Denny O’Shea’s Utopia Ballroom; it was Sidney Klein’s Utopia Ballroom, Denny O’Shea, manager. It was on the east side of Broadway in the Fifties; and when I got there in the middle of high noon on the Avenue, the steel doors were shut flat-tight with no handles.

  An egg-cream neon on the corner was bright as a moron with migraine; in pallid competition with sunlight.

  “You got your lights on,” I said to the razor-nosed man behind the marble counter.

  “Trouble with the juice. Like a egg-cream?”

  “But certainly.”

  An egg-cream is a chocolate soda with a dash of milk that froths on top like it wants to be beer.

  I wiped my lips. “The Utopia. How does one get into the business office of the Utopia?”

  “Front door locked?”

  “Yep.”

  “Round the corner, there’s a skinny set of stairs. Says WATCHMAKER. That’s the second floor. First floor’s the office. Looking for Denny?”

  “Yep.”

  “Denny’s upstairs. Fed him a egg-cream before.”

  “Thanks.”

  I gave him six cents like the sign said. “Eight cents,” he said. He shook his head, sadly. “It’s the friggin’ inflation.”

  3

  I knocked on the door that proclaime
d OFFICE UTOPIA in fire-exit red, and Denny’s boom came back like an instant bellowing echo: “Who knocks?”

  “Me. Pete Chambers.”

  “Stop being cute. Nobody knocks around here except process servers, and they shouldn’t knock. You come in or you stay out. You don’t knock.”

  Denny O’Shea, massive behind his massive desk, blond-red hair jumping up from his forehead, going back in graceful waves; a shining man — hair, teeth, mouth; bright along the high cheekbones, blue-bright and challenging in the eyes, bright along the sardonic eyebrows; wriggles of laughter crinkles on top and hard, smooth, stubborn jaw on bottom. Dennis Quentin O’Shea: Viggy O’Shea’s younger brother (about thirty-five), except that Mrs. O’Shea wasn’t concentrating upon it at the time. Viggy was tall, Denny was taller (Denny was six feet four); Viggy was dark, Denny was cream-skinned, laughing blond; Viggy was shrewd and serious, Denny was a gambling fool. The brothers did resemble each other: Viggy loved the ladies. Denny loved the ladies.

  “Sit down,” he said, “I’ll be with you in a few minutes,” and he dove into sheets of typewritten figures, rustlingly.

  “What do you want?” he said then.

  I unfolded off the couch and I got out my wallet and I gave him Viggy’s note. “That is what I want.”

  He read the note and he gave it back to me. He smiled like the little boy who has just burned his initials in the seat of his father’s extra pair of trousers. “Suppose,” he said, “I give you sixty-five hundred. I’m a little jammed. I’ll give you the sixty-five, and suppose you drop around tomorrow or the next day for the other G. It’ll be a favor.”

  “Why not?”

  He fiddled with his safe and he counted out six thousand five hundred dollars and he gave it to me. “Don’t mention it to Viggy. You know how it is. You’ll have the balance in a day or two. Thanks for the favor.”

  “Not at all.”

  I cupped the light of a match around a cigarette and I said over the rim of my hands, “How’s Mad?”