Anything But Saintly

Chapter 23

Carl and I spent the early part of the afternoon doing what we were paid to do for a change — looking for streetwalkers. Afternoon may seem a peculiar time to hunt for them, but it isn’t. Unlike call girls, who ply their trade mostly by night, streetwalkers seem to work twenty-four hours a day. Of course they actually don’t; it’s different girls working the same district at different hours which creates the impression they’re on around-the-clock duty.

There are certain sections of town where normally you can find streetwalkers at any time of the day or night. Their technique varies according to the hour, but you can find them if you know where to look. After nightfall they merely stroll along the streets carrying the insignia of their trade, the shoulder-strap bag, and awaiting the beep of car horns. During the day, they are more prone to move from bar to bar, merely glancing in and walking on if there are no male customers, entering and looking over the crop if there are. If the prospects don’t seem very promising, they immediately walk out again; if business is likely, they sit at the bar and sip a beer, awaiting the opportunity to approach the man they have their eye on when the barkeep isn’t looking.

We headed for the factory district, parked our F car and moved in different directions to make a tour of the bars which tolerated hustlers. The weather was just as hot and gritty as the previous day, and it seemed that our excuse for not working yesterday morning had been valid. There were a lot of people in the bars, quite a number of them women. But if any of them were hustlers, they were taking the afternoon off, for neither of us got a single approach. At two-thirty we met back at the car, gave up and returned to headquarters.

I left Carl in the Vice squadroom and went over to Homicide to find out if there had been any result as yet from the all-points bulletin we had put out on Little Artie and Nick Bartkowiak. I met Lieutenant Harry Anderson and Max Cole hurrying out the door.

“What’s up?” I inquired.

They paused and Anderson said, “A squeal just came in that Nick Bartkowiak is back at the Falcon Amusement Company. We’re just going over to look at him.”

“I’ll go along,” I said. Then the oddness of his words struck me. “What do you mean, look at him?”

“He was deposited on the front steps,” Anderson said. “In good old prohibition-day gangland style. He’s full of bullets.”

“I’ll be damned!” I breathed. “Little Artie?”

“Presumably,” Anderson said. “No one witnessed the deposit. Seems Biffy Jagoda stepped out for a breath of air and stumbled over the body.”

Max Cole said, “Little Artie must have gone nuts to pull a stunt like that in this town.”

Obviously the little man had. He must have been insane with rage to do anything so arrogantly reminiscent of the 1920’s gang-warfare days. In St. Cecilia you simply didn’t openly execute racket rivals any more and dare the authorities to do something about it. Because what the authorities did, no matter who you were, was arrange to have you strapped in an electric chair.

Anderson said, “If you’re coming along, let’s get moving.”

“I guess I’ll skip it,” I decided. “I wanted to put the arm on Nick personally, but I’m not much interested in viewing his body. Any word at all on Little Artie’s whereabouts yet?”

Anderson shook his head. “The tavern’s staked out, in case he shows there. Incidentally, I told communications to cut the Vice hot-shot speaker in on the circuit if any word comes in, so you’ll know about it as soon as we do. Let’s roll, Max.”

They hurried on down the hall in the direction of the elevator. I returned to the Vice squadroom, told Carl what had happened, then went in and reported the news to the captain.

Spangler sounded relieved to hear that Nick Bartkowiak was dead. I suspect he had had some second thoughts about his vow to push for the man’s conviction on conspiracy charges, and while he probably would have followed up, it simplified matters that the whole thing was now of merely academic interest.

He said, “Well, now that it’s all over, I guess you can confine yourself to vice-squad duty.”

“We’re still not sure that Little Artie killed Katherine Desmond,” I said. “I’d kind of like to continue working with Homicide until that case is cleared up.”

The captain frowned at me. “They have competent people over there, Rudowski. Bartkowiak’s apprehension and conviction was a legitimate interest of this division because he tried to have you killed. But I can’t see that either this dead girl or Little Artie are any of our concern.”

“If Artie killed her, I was indirectly responsible, Chief. I’d like to follow it.”

“Then do it on your own time,” he said shortly. “After your regular hours.”

I decided if he was going to be so G.I., I’d get technical too.

I said, “I really didn’t have to come in this morning, so I figure I have some time coming. Things are dead anyway. We spent an hour and a half in the factory district this afternoon without turning up a single hustler. All Carl and I are doing is sitting around on standby. Suppose I devote this afternoon to the case?”

“I suppose that would be all right,” he said a trifle testily. “But in case of emergency, you’d better let Lincoln know where to reach you in a hurry.”

Back in the squadroom I sat down to brood for a while. It seemed more and more likely that Little Artie Nowak had killed the Desmond girl, particularly since he had just flamboyantly demonstrated that he wasn’t averse to murder and that he possessed an extremely violent temper. He must have been in an insane rage to pull the Bartkowiak kill in the exhibitionistic manner that he had. His temperament certainly matched that of Kitty Desmond’s killer, because only a man in violent rage could have beaten the girl so unmercifully before strangling her to death.

The trouble was that we didn’t actually know. It was only a strong probability. And I didn’t feel like simply sitting around waiting for the hot-shot speaker to announce that Artie had been apprehended.

Rousing myself from my reverie, I said to Carl, “I’m going out for a while.”

“Where?” he asked.

“I’ll be at 125 Ormond Place, apartment 2-B.”

He frowned at me. “Isn’t that where the Desmond girl was killed?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Are you still stewing about that? I thought you had it all figured out that Little Artie killed her.”

“There are still a couple of loose ends, and we’re only sitting anyway. You can phone me if anything comes up.”

“What’s the number?”

I looked in the book under both Desmond and Fenner, but no number was listed. I might have known the girls wouldn’t have had a listed number, call girls seldom do. I called the telephone company, told who I was and said I needed the number on police business. The company won’t give out an unlisted number to just anybody who calls in. They won’t even give it to the phone subscriber, if he happens to forget his own number and is trying to call home. But they will give it to the police on official business. Even then they make sure it’s not just somebody trying to pull a fast one, though. The woman I talked to said it would take a few minutes to look up, and she would call me back. That was to make certain I wasn’t just some joker pretending to be a cop.

She called back five minutes later and gave me the number. Writing it on a slip of paper, I tossed it to Carl.

“Have fun,” he told me.

Doll Fenner answered the door wearing white shorts, a white halter and the same pointed gold bedroom slippers she had worn the night before. She had looked pretty good in lounging pajamas, but in this outfit she was a knockout. She didn’t have Jolly’s abundance of bosom, being a trifle on the small side, but the pajamas had concealed her legs, which was a crime against aesthetics. They were long and slim and milk-white and perfectly tapered, and had a cute little dimple in each knee.

She didn’t look at all surprised to see me. She gave me an odd little half-smile and said, “Hello, Matt. I had an idea you’d be back alone.”

Stepping aside to let me enter, she closed the door and slipped on the spring lock. I eyed the lock thoughtfully.

“Sit down over there,” she said, pointing to the sofa. “Want a drink?”

“No thanks,” I said politely. “I’m not a daytime drinker.” I sat on the sofa.

She curled herself up next to me. She seemed to have made a rapid recovery from her grief over her apartment-mate’s death, for her expression was vivacious and her eyes were sparkling.

“I’ll bet a nickel Jolly doesn’t know where you are,” she said.

“No, she doesn’t,” I said truthfully.

She looked at me with a conspiratorial grin on her face. “You’re kind of a rat, aren’t you?”

“I am?”

“If you were my man and I caught you making secret visits to another woman, I’d clobber you right between the horns.”

It hadn’t occurred to me that she would interpret my visit as an attempt to do a little cheating on Jolly. It should have, because I knew the average pimp felt no sense of loyalty to the woman who kept him. Pimps are completely parasitic, offering little in return for their keep except a rather unstable companionship and an occasional beating. It would seem quite natural to Doll for Jolly’s kept man to make a pass at her. I got the impression that it tickled her ego.

“I’m not your man,” I pointed out.

“I guess you’re not entirely Jolly’s either, or you wouldn’t be here.”

“Well, a guy gets tired of the same woman all the time,” I said in an attempt to stay in character.

She gave me an intimate smile. “I’ll bet you wouldn’t get tired of me.”

I decided to cut this off before it got out of hand. “You’re too new in the business. You can’t be making as much money as Jolly. I’m used to living in style.”