The Fatal Frails

CHAPTER VII

Sally Fontaine looked up from her magazine as Johnny's key let him almost noiselessly into the apartment. He grunted at the sight of her in the living-room armchair. “Thought you'd be rackin' up sack-time, ma. Conscience keepin' you awake?”

“There's nothing the matter with my conscience.” She laid aside the magazine and looked him over as he approached her chair. “You avoided me all night at work,” she said accusingly.

He slipped an arm beneath the knees and another about the shoulders of her flowered lounging pajamas and scooped her out of the chair. He sat down carefully with her on his lap. “I was afraid you'd see the blonde I took up to the room.”

“I saw the blonde,” she informed him. “I heard what you found when you took her up there, too.”

“Yeah? You tell that little giggler Amy I'll paddle her two shades darker if it's the last thing I do.”

“Amy knows who to do her talking to,” Sally told him. “She wouldn't say a word to anyone but me!”

“I'll impress it on her that you're not on the free list either, ma.” He rested his head against the back of the chair. “I need about three hours' sleep. Set the alarm for eleven, will you?” He attempted to outstare the close-range inspection of the brown eyes. “Think you'll know me the next time you see me?”

“It's something about the way you're moving,” she decided aloud. She dropped a hand experimentally on one shoulder, probed lightly, passed on to the other, and inevitably descended to Johnny's adhesive-corseted waist. “I knew it!” she declared. “What happened this time?”

“Someone whiffled one through the blonde's front door tonight. I just happened to be there.”

“I'll bet you just happened to be there.” Her eyes widened as his words registered. “You were shot?”

“Creased, ma. Just creased. Your cuticle scissors give me a harder time when you're manicurin' my paws. The hell of it was my foot got tangled up in a mat an' threw me when I went after the gent.”

“And a good thing, too,” she stated firmly. “How you keep from being killed-” Head cocked to one side, she examined his face. “What were you doing there in the first place?” she asked abruptly.

“You mean aside from the obvious, ma?” He ducked a left lead and smothered her hands in his. “That's what's known as a long, involved story. Stop worryin'. It wasn't even meant for me.”

“If you hadn't been there, you couldn't have been hit,” Sally pointed out with unerring feminine logic. “Was it the blonde they were shooting at? She looked just the type.”

“I guess she was supposed to be up at bat, all right,” Johnny admitted. He ruffled the soft brown hair under his hand. “She's a little shook. She's allergic to the clay-pigeon bit.”

Sally dropped her head on Johnny's shoulder and closed her eyes. “From the look of her, it couldn't happen to a more deserving pigeon,” she murmured. The eyes flew open again, and she lifted her head to look at him. “Tell me about it,” she said.

He eased the slim body on his lap to a more comfortable position. “I'm just tryin' to give the man you called for me the other night a hand in retrievin' a piece of goods swiped from him a while back.”

The brown eyes speculated. “And it was Claude Dechant who did the swiping? That's why you asked me all those questions about the people he used to telephone?”

“It was Dechant. An' he killed himself. I'd like to know why.” Johnny stared broodingly across the room over a flower-pajamaed shoulder. “About all I've done so far tryin' to find out is to tie into the damnedest bunch of do-it-yourself characters you ever saw.”

“Did one of them tear up your room tonight?”

“One of them did.” Johnny's eyes darkened. “I'm gonna speak to him about it.” He looked at Sally on his lap. “I'm also gonna tuck it in the sheets, ma. I need a little shut-eye, an' it'll take Amy half a day to straighten out my place.”

She slid from his lap and led the way into the bedroom. She turned down the bed while Johnny stood in the middle of the floor and shed clothes like a snake sheds skin. Sally sighed and picked up after him. He sat on the edge of the bed and tested the mobility of his corset. It wasn't too bad, he decided.

Sally sat down beside him, and he slipped an arm around her. “Johnny, you're not going to get into trouble over the man who searched you room, are you?”

“Divil a bit of it, ma. He's gonna get in trouble.” He gave her a one-armed hug.

“You know what I-mean!” she said breathlessly as her ribs contracted.

He was silent. He could have sworn he'd had only one use for the bed in his mind when he'd come in here, but the feel of Sally against him was rapidly changing his perspective.

She turned her head inquiringly at the more purposeful pressure of his arm. She saw his eyes. “Stop it!” she scolded lightly. “You know you don't feel-”

“The hell I don't. Shuck yourself on in here.” She stood up obediently, but her eyes remained doubtful. She paused with the pajama top half off. “You're sure that you feel like it?”

“It's only my ribs that're taped, ma.” He watched as she disposed of the pajamas and plumped herself down alongside him. “Get those bony knees out of the way.” “They're not bony,” she said placidly. “They're slender.” “So's a picket fence.” For a very short time he could hear Sally's breathing. After that the sound of his own filled his ears.

Johnny stood in warm noonday sunlight outside the Empire Freight Forwarding Corporation's stout wire fence. It was summer sure enough today, and he was not sure that he approved. He felt sluggish. He tried to flex mental muscles and gear himself up for the meeting with Stitt and its explosive possibilities. Based on Stitt's reaction the last time Johnny had been here, sluggishness was not a condition he could afford.

He set himself in motion finally and started up the narrow cement walk. He headed this time directly for the door marked Office. His first quick look around inside disclosed no one but the plain little receptionist at her desk. “I'd like to see-” Johnny began, but he never got to complete it.

The receptionist turned in her chair as a door at the rear of the office flew open. Carrying a huge wooden bucket in both hands, Max Stitt burst into view. There was no other word to describe it, Johnny thought. At a walk so rapid it was almost a run, the erect-looking man advanced to the desk nearest the front of the office and set down his bucket. “Helen!” It was like a bugle's blare, although the girl was less than a dozen feet away. The voice pulsed with excitement. “Come and have a drink!” The girl rose to her feet with an uncertain look outside the railing. Following the direction of her gaze, Stitt looked and saw Johnny. “Killain!” he trumpeted. “Come in and have a drink!”

Johnny stared. The usually dead-white, rigidly controlled features were flushed and animated. Each individual hair in the graying crew-cut seemed to bristle spikily. Max Stitt wore a business suit, a white shirt and a tie, the tie badly askew. A second before Stitt removed a champagne magnum from his bucket, Johnny realized suddenly that the man was half-seas over.

“Come in, come in!” Stitt urged Johnny. He poured liberally into a glass he dredged up from the depths of the ice-packed bucket and handed it to the receptionist, who accepted it with an embarrassed smile. “Drink up, Helen,” he told the girl. “Take the rest of the day off. Have a good dinner on me. Run the ticket through petty cash in the morning.” He disregarded the girl's murmured thanks to walk over and unlatch the gate in the wooden railing. “Come in,” he repeated. He saw Johnny's face. “That affair of last night,” he said dismissingly. “Send me the bill.”

“I brought you the bill, Stitt.”

For a second, at Johnny's tone, the cold eyes congealed and the features hardened to a rigid austerity. Just for a second, and then before Johnny's unbelieving eyes the Max Stitt he thought he knew was gone again. “Any other day of my life, Killain, I would accommodate you. I would accommodate you gladly. Any day prior to today. At ten o'clock this morning I became a half-owner of the business here. It is an event in a man's life. At ten o'clock this morning I was done with affairs such as that of last night.” He held up the magnum. “You will join me?”

“Too early for bubbly,” Johnny said cautiously. “You got any schnapps?”

“I do have schnapps.” Stitt walked to a green filing cabinet in a corner and removed a dark, squat bottle. He half filled a water glass he removed from a desk. He splashed champagne into a glass he took from the bucket, handed Johnny the water glass and raised his own aloft. “To ten o'clock this morning,” he toasted, and downed his champagne.

“Mr. Stitt-” the receptionist put in timidly from the side. “If you really don't need me any more today-”

“Run along,” he told her. “Draw the curtain on the door. I've packed off the warehouse crew, too. Anyone coming in that door this afternoon can have a drink, nothing else. Tomorrow business as usual, Helen.”

After pulling down the yellow curtain on the front door, the girl went out a door in the back, her bag under her arm. Max Stitt seated himself behind a desk, loosened his collar and produced a box of cigars, which he offered to Johnny. He elevated his feet to the top of the desk, slid down on his spine, stripped the cellophane from a cigar and sighed profoundly in the cloud of smoke from its lighted tip. “I have become legitimized,” Max Stitt proclaimed solemnly to Johnny. “I have no further interest in the disposition of Hegel's piece. I'm done with all that. In this life a man steals what he must to set himself up legitimately. After that a wise man steals only from the tax people.”

“I doubt that Dechant would have agreed with you.” Johnny was curious to see how far Stitt's mellow mood would take him.

“Claude Dechant was a fool,” Stitt said flatly. “To be more specific, a fool over women. They bled him. A pipeline to Fort Knox couldn't have kept him going. He lacked my perspective.” The corners of his mouth lifted around his cigar. “To me, women are an irritation ninety-eight per cent of the time. The other two per cent of the time they are merely slightly less of an irritation. I can't stand their gabble, or their grasping.”

Johnny took a swallow of the pungent, colorless liquor in his glass. “You knew Dechant a long time,” Johnny suggested.

Max Stitt nodded. “We were from Colmar. We'd never worked together, but we knew each other. In 'forty he went with the French, I with the Germans. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw him in an Italian lieutenant's uniform in a cantina in Florence in August of 'forty-four. Right away, when he saw me, he had a plan. Claude always thought big, give the devil his due. I was a captain in charge of two demolition squads. The one bridge out of six left standing in the general retreat from Florence had not been my assignment.” The natural arrogance was back in Stitt's voice, Johnny noted. “Claude was attached to a Canadian colonel as interpreter and liaison, and, of course, in that Italian uniform a spy. It would have been amusing to have gotten him hung, but I listened to Mm.”

Stitt puffed lengthily on his cigar. “He had detailed maps of three of the larger deposits of medieval and modern art that had been moved in around the city from all over Italy. There were over thirty of them altogether, I'm told. I could get trucks. It looked easy, but the Allied advance overran us. It turned out, too, that other people had the same idea we did. Some stuff was loaded and rushed off God knows where. It was never seen again. We were lucky finally to get out with a whole skin. It came down finally to Claude burying a few pieces himself. It took him three years to get back to get them. I was over here by that time. The pickings looked a little better on this side. I hooked on with Arends. He needed someone with my organizing ability who knew the back alleys of Europe like I did.” Max Stitt shrugged.

Johnny prompted him. “And at ten o'clock this morning-”

“I listened to the lawyer read Arends' will. He'd never paid me what the job I was doing for him was worth, but we had an agreement in writing that, if anything happened to him, half of this was mine. I couldn't be sure of him, though. He could have added a codicil to his will at any time. I had to hope he'd figure finally that his widow would be better off with me running the business, and that's the way-it went. I signed a contract with her at the lawyer's to continue as general manager at an increase, with half the profits.” He straightened up in his chair, refilled his champagne glass and raised it to Johnny. “To the end of the old road. No hard feelings. You'll have trouble disposing of that piece. Not many buyers for a thing like that. That's why Claude was a good man to have around: he had contacts.”

“With you comin' into a windfall like that, you're not afraid of the police tryin' to pin the tail on you for Arends?”

“They might think I hired it. They know I didn't do it.” Max Stitt looked down at his glass. “Arends wasn't alone when he went up to Madeleine's apartment. Two of the help told the police that another man went upstairs with Jack. They never did see him come down. The police had me over there last night. It seems I'm not the man.”

“Did you hear a description?”

“They were careful that I didn't. They shouldn't have too much trouble finding out.”

“You think you know?”

“I know that as of ten o'clock this morning I started minding Max Stitt's business, and his only.”

“Did I tell you Palmer made me an offer for the piece?” Johnny asked casually.

“Palmer did? Palmer? He wouldn't pay a quarter to see an elephant roller-skate. Something wrong there. He stole his money young, and he's been a cautious type ever since. If he ever knew one-tenth the uses to which Claude put his money-“

“What I hear, him an' Faulkner are goin' to school on it.”

Max Stitt laughed, a harsh, unmusical sound. “Faulkner,” he said disparagingly. “That warmer Bruder?”

“He seems to get around with the redhead.”

“She's using him.”

“You were a little rough on her a while back.”

“She told you that?” Stitt looked surprised, then smiled wisely. “She didn't tell you. You saw. So she's using you, too.” He stood up behind the desk. “I showed her that no woman uses Max Stitt.” He lifted the magnum and held it to the light. “Empty. And I've talked myself sober.” His light-colored eyes considered Johnny. “Yesterday it wouldn't have been like this, Killain. Tomorrow it won't be. All I want is to be left alone.” He stubbed out his cigar with finality. “Sorry to rush you, but I'm locking up.”

He removed a heavy key ring from the center drawer of his desk and followed Johnny to the front door. Johnny was already on the cement walk outside when Max Stitt spoke again. “Don't turn your back on that redhead. Take it from a man who knows.”

The click of the lock in the door sounded as Johnny turned. Stitt waved from behind the glass, and disappeared.

Johnny shrugged, and continued on down the walk.

Johnny stood in the lobby of the Hotel Alden with the receiver of the house phone to his ear and listened to it ring a dozen times with no response. He gave up, finally, and recradled it. He thought it over a moment, undecided. He would have liked to talk to Jules Tremaine.

“Ah-sir?”

Johnny half turned at the low-voiced inquiry at his elbow, He looked at the skinny, balding little man in rusty blue suit and frayed-collared, pin-striped shirt who stood nervously dry-washing his hands.

“Talkin' to me, Jack?” Johnny inquired.

“Please,” the man said softly. He was not looking at Johnny. “I'm the clerk at the cigar counter. If it's Mr. Tremaine you're looking for, follow me over there.” He was moving away before he had completed the sentence, his gait a stiff-kneed trot.

Johnny watched him as he moved in behind the stand across from the mail desk, picked up a feather duster and energetically attacked a magazine rack. A glance around the lobby disclosed no one taking an interest in the exchange.

Johnny gave him a couple of moments before he followed. “Couple cigars. Somethin' bigger'n a perfecto.”

“Yes, sir,” the clerk said clearly. His bald head flashed as he stooped to remove boxes from the cigar case. “We have three or four excellent blunts, if you'd just have a look-” Slim white hands opened boxes and displayed cigars. “Tremaine?” the man asked without moving his lips. Six feet away, Johnny thought, the voice must be inaudible.

“Yeah.” Johnny fingered a well-shaped blunt from a box and held it up to the light. “Where is he?”

“The police took him away. Two hours ago.” This guy should have been a ventriloquist, Johnny thought. Looking right at him you couldn't see his lips move. “I'll take three of these.” He put the cigars in his jacket pocket and waited for his change. “Thanks, Jack.”

“Thank you, sir.” The faintest possible stress was on the pronoun. The clerk returned to his dusting.

Johnny moved away from the stand. Tremaine picked up by the police? Could Tremaine have been the second man the apartment help insisted had gone up to Madeleine Winters' apartment with Jack Arends? Tremaine in Madeleine Winters' apartment? Johnny shook his head. He couldn't see it. Not the way Tremaine felt about her. Unless-

He headed for the phone booths. Eddie Lake was the man to handle this. In the yellow pages he ran a thick forefinger down the “L's,” then stepped inside a booth and dialed. “Eddie?” He listened impatiently to a voice explaining nasally that it was empowered to deputize for Eddie. “Put Eddie Lake on the line,” Johnny demanded. “Eddie? Johnny Killain.”

“Well, well, well,” a bright voice chirped. “The bear that walks like a man. How much, bail? What's the charge?”

Johnny grinned. “You think I'm in trouble, Eddie?”

“Do I hear from you if you're not?” the tenor piped injuredly. “Six months an' never a word.”

“I been a little busy. So catch me up. Tell me everything you learned in the six months. It won't take long,” Johnny gibed.

“I'll tell you everything we both learned,” Eddie Lake said sharply. “That won't take any longer.”

“Same old Eddie,” Johnny said, laughing. “Quick on th' trigger. Listen.” He turned serious. “Grab one of your shysters an' get over to the precinct an' spring a boy by the name of Jules Tremaine. Residence is the Hotel Alden. He was scooped a couple hours ago.”

“Is it bailable?”

“I doubt there's a charge. I think they're goosin' him on general principles.”

“Anything I should know?”

“A monied party got dusted off the other night. I think they're tryin' to put this boy close to the scene.”

“That's a little bit more than general principles. If they do, my money's no good.”

“You get him out before they do. He's not the type to talk quick an' easy. Bring him up to the Alden. I'll be in the lobby. How long will it take?”

“Not so very if you didn't keep me hanging on the phone answering foolish questions. If I spring him at all. I'll see you.”

Johnny smiled as he hung up. He headed for a lobby chair and sank down into one that commanded a full view of the front entrance. By the time he had taken out and lit up one of his recently purchased cigars, the smile had been replaced by a scowl.

He was remembering the evening he had picked up Gloria Philips at the Spandau office for their dinner date. The redhead had locked up. Jules Tremaine had not been there.

Johnny frowned down at the wreathed blue smoke curling from the cigar ash. Could it actually have been Tremaine with Arends up in the blonde's apartment?

He had time to consider another problem that had been tickling at his consciousness for some time. Where could Claude Dechant have hidden a thirty-pound object measuring eighteen by fifteen inches? Hidden it well enough to escape the eager beavers whose sole idea was its recovery?

Knowing Dechant, he probably wouldn't trust it too far away from him, yet Max Stitt, who should have known Dechant and his ways better than any of them, had been unable to find it.

If you believe him, Killain. If you believe him.

Johnny sighed, stretched out his legs and settled down to wait grimly for part of the answer, at least, to be delivered to him.

If Tremaine had been in Madeleine Winters' apartment with Jack Arends, Johnny wanted a few words with Jules Tremaine.

Dan Marlowe

The Fatal Frails