Murder Is A Girl’s Best Friend

Chapter 12

THE FAMOUS WEDGE-SHAPED ROOM WAS crowded-packed to the low-slung rafters with groovy young artistic types, all dressed in black, all drinking and smoking, and all listening intently, with half-closed eyes, to the hip, cool sounds of the Negro jazz quartet performing on the slightly raised stage. A few Negroes were sitting in the audience, too, thrumming their fingers on the tabletops, scatting, bobbing their heads and rolling their shoulders in perfect sync with the music. The Vanguard was one of the few public places in the city where Negroes and Caucasians could mingle in easy harmony-and one of the few public places in the world that was likely to be so crowded on a late, wintry Tuesday night (okay, Wednesday morning) like this.

I spied a small, empty table at the very back of the room, hurried over and sat down, hoping nobody would notice me. Even in the Village-the most liberal and progressive neighborhood in Manhattan (and probably the whole country)-it wasn’t considered proper for a woman to go out to a nightclub alone. I slipped my coat off my shoulders, folded it over the back of my chair, took off my beret and gloves, and immediately lit up a cigarette. Then I slumped into a boneless slouch, trying to look cool and intellectual, like a beat jazz-lover whose boyfriend had just gone to the bathroom. (It isn’t easy to look cool and intellectual when your heart is banging like a kettle drum and your brain is stuck on the subject of murder.)

Some of the people sitting nearby turned to gape at me-rather suspiciously, I thought-then began whispering among themselves. They probably thought I was a doped-up prostitute on the prowl for a jazzed-up john.

Hunching over till my hair made a wavy brown curtain around my face, I squinted my eyes and scanned the room, searching for a dark-haired, bearded young man with a dog. There were at least twelve dark-haired fellows with beards in attendance, but only one of them had a dog. He (the man, not the dog) was standing and leaning against the bar, watching the show and listening to the music, with one elbow propped on the counter and his fringed chin propped on the shelf of his upturned hand. The miniature dachshund was sitting-in as upright a position as a long narrow dog with extremely short legs can achieve-on the barstool next to him.

My spine snapped to attention. It was Jimmy and Otto. I was certain of it. (Brilliant deduction, right? I mean, am I a shrewd detective, or what?)

I was sitting there straight as a broomstick, staring into space, trying to figure out a good way to approach Jimmy and get him to make a full confession, when one of the waiters-a rangy buck with sandy brown hair and a very broad, decidedly uncool smile-suddenly appeared at my table.

“Can I get you somethin’ from the bar, Ma’am?” he said, sounding just like Chester B. Goode, Matt Dillon’s gimpy deputy on the popular radio show Gunsmoke. You could tell from the hick accent and the beaming smile he was new in town. Probably a student at NYU.

“Just a cup of coffee, please,” I said. I really wanted another Scotch and water, but I couldn’t afford it (money-wise or mind-wise).

“Somethin’ for your date?” he asked, taking for granted I had come with an escort.

“No, he’s not here yet, and I don’t know what he wants to drink. He was supposed to meet me here at eleven-thirty. I can’t imagine what’s keeping him.”

“Snow must have slowed him down.” The open-faced fellow was definitely from out of town, I decided. A born and bred New Yorker would have thought I’d been stood up, and said so.

“You’re probably right,” I replied. “I guess I’d better wait for him a while, if that’s okay.”

“S’just fine with me!” he said, with a grin so wide it literally wrapped around the sides of his face. “Sit tight. I’ll get you some coffee.”

He walked away and I sighed with relief, thanking the gods of Greenwich Village for small favors. If this had been an uptown nightspot, I probably would have been asked to leave.

The jazz quartet ended their set and stepped down from the stage, engulfed in a warm wave of finger snapping, handclapping, foot tapping, and low whistles. As the musicians made their way back to their tables and sat down with their friends, a rather large, clean-shaven man walked over to the mike, thanked the quartet for their inspiring performance, and announced they’d be playing two sets a night, at nine and eleven, for the rest of the week. Then he asked if there were any poets in the audience.

One hand went up. Guess who it belonged to.

“Uh-oh!” the man behind the mike exclaimed, peering toward the bar, holding his hand up over his eyes as if shielding them from the sun. “I see Jimmy Birmingham is here tonight-which isn’t so unusual since he’s here almost every night!” There was a round of cordial laughter and a couple of loud guffaws. “And from the serious look on his philosophical face,” the man continued, “I’d say he’s got something important he wants to tell us. Right, Jimmy?”

Jimmy shrugged, then gave a quick, almost imperceptible nod.

“So come on up, boy, and bring your pup with you. You’re both welcome on my stage anytime.” He motioned for Jimmy to come forward, then returned his gaze to the audience. “Let’s hear it for the Vanguard’s resident poet, Jimmy Birmingham, and his sidekick, Otto-or, as we say around here, the cat with the dog. I’ll leave it up to you to decide which is which!”

There was more laughter and another round of polite applause.

Straightening to his full height-which I judged to be about five foot ten-Jimmy turned and picked Otto up from the barstool, tucking the dog’s tiny haunches in the bend of his elbow and bracing the rest of his slim, sausage-shaped body along the length of his forearm. Then, carrying his precious pooch in close to his side, as a woman might carry her favorite clutch bag, he sauntered along the bar to the peak of the pie-shaped room and stepped onto the stage.

As Jimmy moved into the amber glow of the single spotlight, I got my first good look at his face. He was unusually handsome, in a stark, intense, Tony Curtis sort of way, and his dark brown Vandyke beard-as well as the dark brown hair on his head-was sleek and neatly trimmed. He wore a black turtleneck over a pair of charcoal pants. As he grabbed one of the musician’s stools with his free hand and dragged it over to the mike, I saw that his body was strong and thin, and his coordination precise.

Propping one buttock and thigh on the seat of the tall stool and planting the foot of the same leg on the crossbar, Jimmy placed Otto astride his charcoal shank and gave one long, loving stroke from the top of his pointy-nosed head to the tip of his string bean-size tail. Then, seeing that his pet was comfortable and perfectly balanced, he leaned his agile torso forward, grabbed the mike with both hands and-in a surprisingly deep, burnished baritone-began to recite:

Here it be, where we are we, together in the degenerate hell of this life. So what? What are we to do about it? Maybe you can’t care. Even a snail eats. It’s our cause to complain. Surround yourself with your own orchestra because we will always survive the creeps, hear our own music, defeat the streets. Our jumbo world is ours. Inside we will stay, away from our enemies and the luster of injustice.

A few seconds of silence ensued, then-as Jimmy let go of the microphone, tucked Otto under his arm and breezed off the stage-the crowd broke out in restrained but rapturous applause. Heads were nodding in profound agreement and faces were awash in earnest reverence. Some people rose to their feet and signaled their approval by raising their glasses in a silent toast to Jimmy Birmingham’s verbal brilliance.

Was I the only one in the room who felt like laughing till my sides split open?

I was straining my ears, hoping for a concurring giggle, or at least one poorly stifled snicker, when the waiter appeared with my coffee and set it down in front of me. “Here you go, Ma’am,” he said, putting a small bowl of sugar cubes and a puny pitcher of cream down next to the coffee mug. Then he turned aside, hoisted his drink-laden tray back up to his shoulder, and began worming his way toward other customers.

As the waiter moved away, clearing my line of vision, I saw that somebody else had suddenly appeared at my table. It was a medium-tall somebody with dark brown hair, a dark brown beard, and an adorable dark brown creature nestled in the curve of his arm. It was the cat with the dog. And the way the cat was leering at me, I realized I was the canary.

“YOU LOOK LIKE YOU COULD USE SOME company,” Jimmy said, sitting down-uninvited-in the chair closest to mine. Cradling his little dog against his chest, he gave me a cocksure smile and said, “Otto saw you sitting here all alone, and he thought you were a real gone chick, and he told me he was itching to meet you right away. ”

“Maybe he just has fleas,” I said without thinking. Aarrrrgh! For a true crime writer whose main purpose in life, at that moment, was to find out the truth about a certain crime, I couldn’t have come up with a worse (i.e., less enticing and manipulative) reply. Jimmy and Otto had been dropped in my lap like a gift from the gods, and if I knew what was good for me, I wouldn’t make a stupid joke out of it. I would gratefully accept the gift, and use it in good health.

“Just teasing, Otto,” I quickly added, leaning over to pat the dog’s tiny head and fondle his warm, silky ears. “I’m sure you never had a flea in your life.” To prove the sincerity of my contrived (and, hopefully, conciliatory) words, I began rubbing the underside of Otto’s narrow chin and staring, like a lover, into his small, round, worshipful eyes.

Mission accomplished. Otto was in seventh heaven, and so-it would seem-was Jimmy Birmingham.

“He really likes you,” Jimmy said, lowering his deep voice to an intimate croon, writhing in his chair like a python, slithering so close to me I could feel his hot breath on my cheek. “And Otto’s the best judge of females I’ve ever known. He picks all the best tomatoes for me.”

Oh, brother! Does this line work on most women? Did it work on Judy? I wanted to believe that Terry’s little sister had seen through Jimmy’s come-on in an instant, that she had toyed with his affections as much as he had no doubt toyed with hers, but-hard as I tried-I couldn’t bring myself to embrace that theory. Judy had been young and hungry, and all alone in the world. And from everything Elsie Londergan and Vicki Lee Bumstead had told me, I knew she had probably soaked up Otto’s-I mean Jimmy’s-atten tions like a sponge, and begged her desperate little heart out for more.

“So Otto picks your girlfriends and your vegetables,” I said, shifting my gaze from Otto’s face to Jimmy’s. “He’s a hound of many talents. Does he write your poetry for you, too?”

(Look, I know that was another really stupid response. I should have been flirting with the suspect, flattering him, trying to gain his confidence and coax some information out of him, instead of casting aspersions on his literary skills. But I couldn’t help myself. Really! I was so crazed and exhausted-and still struggling so hard to suppress my inner giggle fit over Jimmy’s silly poem-that I didn’t know what I was doing, or saying, anymore.)

Jimmy was enraged. A fire blazed up in his dark brown eyes and I thought, for a moment, he was going to hit me. But-as I sat there frozen like a dumbstruck deer, trying to decide whether to duck right or duck left-his taut muscles suddenly relaxed and his facial expression underwent a dramatic transformation. And you probably won’t believe this (since I couldn’t believe it myself), but Jimmy’s entire stance toward me flipped, in the space of a single heartbeat, from flaming anger to-of all things!-burning attraction.

“You’re a mischievous little minx, aren’t you?” he said, putting Otto down on his lap and scooting his chair even closer to mine. “I’ve got your number now, sweetheart. You’re a doll with an attitude, and you like to cause trouble, and I go crazy for women like that.” To prove it, he fastened his left hand on my thigh, clamped his right hand around the back of my neck, yanked my face forward, and planted a deep, ferocious kiss on my astonished, gaping mouth.

I would have kicked him in the crotch if Otto hadn’t been sitting there. I would have clawed his face to ribbons if it hadn’t been protected by his beard. I would have pushed him backward and socked him in the nose if he hadn’t been so much stronger than I was. And if I’d had a knife in my hand, I would have (okay, surely wouldn’t have, but at least could have) stabbed him in the stomach.

But I didn’t have a knife, or a gun, or any other deadly weapons in my possession. The only instruments of destruction I had at my disposal were my teeth, and I decided-without a second’s hesitation-to use them.

“Owwwww!!!!!” Jimmy wailed, shoving me away with one hand and nursing his bleeding lower lip with the other. “You bit me!!! It hurts like hell!!! What did you do that for?!!!”

“I did it for Judy Catcher,” I said.

I was as shocked by my answer as Jimmy was. Though I had meant to bring up Judy’s name and try to get Jimmy to talk about her, I hadn’t planned on doing it in such a sudden, brutal, indiscriminate way. But now the cat was out of the bag and running down the street like a rabid lion on the loose, and I had no choice but to chase after it.

“Judy was a very good friend of mine,” I added, as if that would explain everything.

“So what if she was?!!!” he cried, eyes big as half-dollars. “That doesn’t give you the right to bite me!” Blood was trickling from the cut on his lip and seeping down into his beard. Otto rose up on his hindquarters and began to paw at Jimmy’s chest, whimpering.

“You had no right to kiss me either,” I growled.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah! So maybe I shouldn’t have done that,” Jimmy admitted, gingerly dabbing at his lip with a paper napkin. “But I still don’t see what Judy Catcher has to do with the goddamn price of eggs.”

“It’s simple,” I said. “You hurt my good friend, so I felt like hurting you.”

Jimmy sat back in his chair and gave me a long, steady, piercing stare. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I never hurt Judy.” He was getting angry again. “Whatever she told you about me, it wasn’t true.”

“Judy never said anything bad about you. And now that she’s dead she’ll never be able to.” I paused to let the implication of my words sink in. “But that doesn’t change anything, really, because I didn’t need any tips from Judy. I figured it all out for myself.”

“Figured what out?”

“That you were probably the one who killed her.”

(No, I wasn’t going off half-cocked again. I had decided, during the course of the last few minutes, that I might find out more about Jimmy-and, likewise, his relationship with Judy-if I simply pulled out all the stops and hit him between the eyes with an outright accusation. The man obviously responded to rude and unexpected pronouncements! And besides, it was getting really, really late. And I was really, really tired. I didn’t have the time, or the energy-okay, the sense!-to conduct a slow and cunning interrogation. Or play any more guessing games.)

“What did you say?” Jimmy snarled, narrowing his eyes and clenching his jaw so tight his Vandyke twitched. He didn’t look like Tony Curtis anymore. Now he looked like Bela Lugosi. With a bloody beard.

I took a deep breath, said a quick prayer, and repeated my allegation.

And that’s when Jimmy gave me the shock of my life.

Scooping Otto up in his arms again, Jimmy clutched the little dog in close to his heart, dropped his chin to his chest, hunched his shoulders, and began to cry! I’m not talking about your standard case of the weepies, either. I’m talking about great big heaving sobs and blubbers. I’m talking deep, guttural moans of woe. I’m talking yelps, and skreaks, and caterwauls, and the kind of howls caused by a full moon.

And that was just for starters. After three or four interminable seconds of this astonishing clamor, Otto started howling, too.

I didn’t know what to do. Every face in the place was turned in my direction, and all eyes were blaming me for causing the disturbance. I had reduced their brilliant and beloved poet to tears! I had brought pain and suffering to their most cherished canine! What kind of woman was I? And what the hell was I doing here, anyway? Why wasn’t I at home in my bed-where I was supposed to be-like every other decent God-fearing female who doesn’t have a date?

I couldn’t stand up to the condemning stares and silent questions. And I couldn’t stop Jimmy’s crying, either. All my apologies went unheeded, and-though I pleaded with the weeping poet to calm himself and his little dog down-they both kept right on yowling.

As you can imagine, I was dying to know why Jimmy was crying his big brown eyes out. Was he stricken with grief-truly lamenting the loss of his former lover and friend-or was he wallowing in remorse and self-hatred, bemoaning his own brutal role in Judy’s death? Had he flown into a jealous rage over Judy’s affair with Gregory Smythe and killed the only girl he’d ever loved? Or had he knocked Judy off to get his hands on the diamonds-which he had never been able to find (which may have been the real cause of all this blatant boohooing)?

These and many other questions were burning a hole in my frontal lobe, but I knew I couldn’t get the answers now-not while Jimmy was in the throes of a nervous breakdown. Not while I was so tired and confused I couldn’t tell the difference between a mourner and a murderer. I’d have to talk to Mr. Birmingham later-at another time-when he and Otto were in a better mood. When scores of people weren’t staring at me in anger, preparing to rush my table and eject me from the premises for causing their adored club mascots such vociferous anguish.

Offering Jimmy and Otto one last apology (which, as far as I could tell, went unheeded by them both), I plunked fifteen cents down on the table (a dime for the untouched coffee, a nickel for the tip), and shoved my arms into the sleeves of my coat. Then I grabbed my purse and gloves, plopped my hat on my head, jumped to my feet, propelled myself to the door, and made a hasty (okay, hell-bent) departure.