Dead of Night

Chapter nineteen: Explaining a murder

My knowledge of Syria was limited to recognition of the round orange luggage stickers from the Hotel Magnifique in Damascus. Plus the fact that “on my whiskers’ life” is violent cussing in Lebanese. According to Tadross.

Even if I’d been hep to those travelogue talkies, it wouldn’t have helped me to understand the Narians. The house to which I’d been directed, a block away from the Atlantic Avenue section of Little Syria, was an ordinary frame double-decker, outside. Inside — even the glimpse from the hall to which the solemneyed teen-ager in a loose, long-sleeved, ankle-length silk something admitted me — the place was right out of the Arabian Nights.

A sunset of tapestries on the walls. Oriental rugs in rich wine and amber on the floor. More rugs over low divans. Stray scarfs of luscious silk, scattered around. Brass-and-black-marble coffee table with a circle of thimble-size gilt cups. A great glass-and-porcelain contraption with long tubing and a curved ivory pipestem on a copper stand. There were none of the nondescript steel engravings or wishy-washy color paintings such as decorate our soigné hotel apartments. The Narians didn’t miss them; in their place hung rifles with curved stocks and long blue barrels and mother-of-pearl inlay on the locks, scimitars with silver hilts and beautifully engraved blades, daggers with jeweled handles. As the radio commercials say, Mmmmm!

Golub Narian fitted the picture perfectly. About forty. Sharp-featured, long-nosed, thick-lipped; a face hewn out of well-polished mahogany. White fez on top, brown beard at the bottom.

He received me in the long living-room, listened politely with his head tilted, birdlike, while I told him I wanted to get in touch with the Miss Narian who accompanied Miss Tildy Millett. It seemed crass to say “worked for” in that home of splendor.

He was extremely sorry; he didn’t know what I was talking about; perhaps his English was too poor to understand me correctly; how had I happened to visit his home?

I said I’d just come from Mister Lanerd’s.

He was courteous but unimpressed. Some badly informed person must have misdirected me.

I’d been using my eyes while he gave out with his Levantine version of the runaround; the only genuinely New Yorky thing in that gorgeous room was a pile of newspapers on a copper-and-tile table beside one of the divans. A couple were in that curlicue type, but the one on top of the pile was our most lurid tabloid. Dated Wednesday, the eleventh. With a full-page picture of Johnny the Grocer as he lay in a puddle of blood on the floor of a phone booth. Story on page three!

Either Nikky had been there recently, or the Narians had learned of their cousin’s interest in Johnny Scaluck and his killer. I picked up the paper.

“There’s likely to be more of this sort of thing, Mister Narian. I may be able to save your cousin and Miss Millett a great deal of trouble if I can talk to Miss Narian.”

He wouldn’t admit anything. He surveyed me with an impassivity that would have earned him many a pot at our Dealer’s Choice Association meetings. He apologized for leaving me while he consulted with others who were doubtless as ignorant as he was, about the matters of which I spoke.

He was gone so long Nikky would have had time to get halfway to the Canadian border. I’d practically given up when zip! Suddenly a girl was in the room. She’d slipped in behind me so silently she could have plunged one of those scimitar blades in my back, before I knew there was anyone around. She was an older edition of the slender child who’d let me in the house, and wore the same kind of floor-sweeping silk wrapper. Long silver earrings dangled on either side of her olive face.

But the younger one was merely attractive. This girl was voluptuous. Prominent breasts, wide hips, sultry mouth. Even her almond-shaped eyes could have been an invitation, except they were resentful and hostile.

“Hello. You’re Nikky?”

“Who are you?” She wouldn’t admit anything, either.

“Gilbert Vine. I work for the Plaza Royale.” I didn’t want to frighten her by saying “detective.”

“What you want?”

“To get a message to Miss Millett.”

“How do I know where she is?” Nikky shrugged.

“There’s been an arrest in connection with the murder in Miss Millett’s hotel suite.”

She didn’t bat an eye.

“Miss Millett might save an innocent man by telling what she knows about the killing.”

“I am sorry. I cannot—”

She swung around as someone moaned, “Ahhh!” from the doorway.

Tildy rushed into the room. No fake eye patch or Spanish combs. The black wig was gone; the familiar platinum Dutch bob was back. Crisp white shirtwaist, pale lemon skirt. She was the Queen of Skates as I remembered her. Strictly a knockout.

After rubbing elbows with celebrities for a few years, you get to have a certain contempt for most of them, simply because it’s difficult to understand how they happen to be famous. But there are always a few who command your respect if not admiration. Hard to put your finger on that quality. Whatever it was, she had a lot of it. She would always be the center of attention, no matter how many others were around. She seized my arm frantically.

“They’ve arrested Dow?”

Evidently she’d been where she heard all I said, assumed that I meant I’d been with Lanerd, instead of at his home.

“You realize,” I made it sound exasperated, “half the cops in New York are hunting for you?” It might have been true by that time, for all I knew. “How long’d you think you could get away with this hide-and-seek?”

Nikky glared ferociously; two little white spots showed at her nostrils; I remembered what Lanerd had said about her temperament.

Tildy gripped my arm more tightly. “I did not know about Dow.”

“You knew about the dead man in your closet!” I had to shock her to get her to do what I wanted, but I didn’t dare carry it too far. Nikky was getting madder by the minute. “You knew someone would be arrested for Roffis’s death. So what’d you do! You ran out, leaving someone else—”

“No, no, no!” Tildy shook me, to emphasize her denial. “I was afraid. I knew there was a fight. But I did not know Roffis had been killed. No.”

“You weren’t in any doubt about there having been a fight!” I had to concentrate on Tildy. But out of the corner of my eye I saw the elder Narian come back into the room. “That probably someone had been hurt! But you didn’t bother to look! You didn’t tell anyone about the man who came in your bedroom!”

“Yes,” she said tensely. “I did tell Dow!”

“Funny he didn’t give Hacklin any description of the man.” The only way to reach her emotions was through her feeling for Lanerd, that was plain as boiled potatoes.

She released my arm. “Perhaps I didn’t—” She pressed finger tips to her temples. “Maybe I was too vague — but, of course, then I didn’t know Roffis had actually been murdered, you see.”

I stared with what I hoped was utter disgust. “You’re content to let it go at that?”

“I don’t want an innocent man to suffer — for a horrible crime like that. But when this — this intruder came in my bedroom—”

“How’d he get in?”

“I don’t know,” she cried. “He must have had a duplicate key. He was in the bedroom when I returned to it, after dinner.”

“You scooted right back to the living-room, asked Roffis to put him out?”

Nikky said sharply, “No, she did not. The man said he was from headquarters. Claimed he’d come to take Miss Millett downtown. He did look like a detective, too.”

I asked what a detective looked like.

Tildy made expansive gestures. “Oh, tall. Big. Broad-shouldered. Heavy-set.”

“What was he wearing?”

They couldn’t remember. Something dark, Nikky thought. Gray, said Tildy.

“What made you decide he wasn’t from headquarters?”

“Mister Roffis and Mister Hacklin, both, had warned us,” Tildy answered, “to be on the lookout for anyone pretending to be a policeman. And of course I was suspicious right off because he’d sneaked in my bedroom that way, and hadn’t spoken to Roffis or anything.”

“Yair? So you called your bodyguard. And?”

“He ran into the bedroom. We heard an angry argument,” she glanced at Nikky for confirmation; Nikky nodded; “then the bedroom door was slammed, and we couldn’t hear anything else. But after a few minutes, I began to be frightened. I called through the closed door to Roffis, and there wasn’t any answer.”

Nikky said, “I opened the door, and there wasn’t anybody there.”

“At first,” Tildy went on, “we supposed Roffis had put the man out and was taking him to a police station or the District Attorney’s office.”

Nikky added, “But when Mister Roffis didn’t come back, we were both very scared. I begged Miss Millett to call up Mister Lanerd, across the hall.” She touched Tildy’s arm, but the skater kept watching me to see how much of it I believed.

It had more holes in it than a fish net, but I let them think I fell for it hook, line, and sinker. “If you’d only gone back to the hotel after the show and made that statement, you’d have saved a lot of headaches. You better come back and make it now, before things get balled up worse for Mister Lanerd.”

Nikky said, “No,” flatly.

Tildy held her right arm stiffly at her side, clenched her right fist, and pounded her thigh. “I can’t let Dow suffer any more. But—” She couldn’t decide.

“All right. If you want to let it go at that.” I started for the door.

“No, no.” She bit her upper lip. “Wait. Wait! I will come.”

Nikky cried, “I’m going with you.”

“Not in that.” The skater eyed the native costume. “Go up and change. Hurry.”

Nikky swirled out in a flurry of silk.

Tildy flew to Golub Narian, put her arms around him, touched her cheek to his. “You will understand, dear friend. It’s better I go by myself. I will be back for Nikky later. Tell her I will be all right.”

She turned to me. “Quickly, before she comes down.”

We went out hastily. I helped her into my car, kicked the starter.

There was a red at the Atlantic Avenue corner. I slowed to try and make it without stopping.

The taxi rolled up alongside with its bumper about at my front hub cap when the first shot shattered the windshield halfway between my head and Tildy’s.