Dead of Night

Chapter twenty-seven: Clues from a wallet

A patrol car with two stony-eyed sergeants idled before the Continental Building as I left. The sight of a uniform wasn’t as reassuring as it might have been, considering the danger I was in.

There was enough ringing in my ears without having to listen to a bawling-out from Hacklin or Reidy Duman or Harry Weissman for having stayed the hand of authority in its descent on Ruth or Auguste or Edie. It wouldn’t have helped my headache to explain how my Buick happened to stand on a Brooklyn corner with its windshield riddled.

It struck me forcibly, at the sight of those minions of the law, that maybe I’d been betting my cards too strong. When the showdown came I might look pretty silly, backing my judgment against all the badges. But I couldn’t afford to drop; I had so much at stake I’d have to play it out, regardless.

Keith Walch wasn’t at Iceville when I got to the big rink on West Fifty-Second. About a dozen girls in short white skirts and high white shoes, swinging long colored capes from their shoulders, swooped around the ice; Over the Waves came out of a wire recorder like a wheezy carousel. It was cool in there after the Death Valley temperature of the street; the butterfly capes and the easy, rhythmic movements were soothing to watch.

One of the cuties swooped over, stopped in a silvery spray of ice. Mister Walch? She didn’t know; she thought he might be in the Iceville office with Miss Millett. She bobbed her head in the direction of the office.

It was behind a flimsy gypsum-board partition with a thin, jerry-built door. Red paint notified the unauthorized to Keep Out — Millett Enterprises, Inc. The door wasn’t open but it didn’t have to be for the voice inside to penetrate. I couldn’t hear what the speaker was saying until I nursed the knob around noiselessly, pushed gently.

It was Walch. On the phone. In no genial frame of mind. “... they pick him up around half past ’leven last night, gallopin’ up Park Avenuh with nothin’ on ’cept his shorts, screamin’ bloody murder... sure, he was schwocked to th’ scuppers... cop took him back up to the apartment where those cream puffs ’f yours put the snatch on his suitcases, his clothes, his cush... huh?”

The door was at one end of a storeroom cluttered with theatrical trunks, spotlights, piles of three-sheet posters showing the Incomparable Tildy doing a split, five feet above the ice.

The agent howled like a wounded weasel. “... it means a hell of a lot to me... th’ cream puff who held him while th’ other one made off with his stuff was still there, gettin’ her clothes on... cop hadda run her in, too, an’ of course she counters by swearin’ out a complaint Yaker tried to rape her... he couldn’t get Lanerd at the hotel so he called me at th’ club. I spent all night with th’ dumb creep, diggin’ up bail, gettin’ a legal eagle to work on th’ cream puff, hirin’ a doc to examine her, make sure she hadn’t been hurt... now lissen, I got enough snafus to straighten out, without... huh?”

I didn’t make any undue commotion crossing to the opposite end of the storeroom.

“... yes, goddam it, all night... they wouldn’t let him go until she made a statement denying her assault charge... deal we finally made at five this morning was, if he gets his clothes back — I hadda get one of my suits from the club for him — an’ the suitcases, he’ll forget about the money in his wallet, eighteen hundred smackers, a nice price for a cream puff, godsake... but she claims she don’t know how to contact her chum-bum, except through you... so they’re both to meet y’ there at six o’clock... now lissen!”

He did the listening, for the length of time it took me to get where I could see in the office. He was alone, sitting on the small of his spine in a swivel chair with one foot cocked up on top of a desk drawer. He wore a mauve jacket over a lime-tinted sport shirt. He heard me or saw me, the second I saw him.

“... hold everything,” he snarled at the phone, “somebody jus’ opened a manhole, a big stink blew in... I’ll call y’ back.” He slammed the receiver down viciously. “Why, damn you! Don’t you get enough key-holing in your own dump? You gotta come over here?”

“Where’s Tildy?” There were a dozen glossy-print photographs of her tacked up on the partition; on the desk beside a pair of rocker-blade skates, a bronze paperweight with the familiar twirled-out skirt and shapely legs!

“Where you won’t find her, bud.” He came up out of the chair, his face mottling. “Half a mind to mark you up good; takin’ her to the Brulard last night, you—”

“You haven’t even half a mind if you think there was any monkey business.”

He grabbed one of the skates, swung it high. I had no choice. I gave the desk a shove. It pinned him against the chair. He threw the skate. I had a forearm up. It numbed my wrist so for a few seconds I thought it was broken.

I went across the desk at him. He was backed up against the partition. When I bounced knuckles off his chops, his head banged one of those photos of Tildy. I nailed him again on the rebound. A good solid bone-to-bone sock. He went down. The chair went over. The oak arm clipped him as it toppled. His head bobbled around as if his neck was broken.

After I made sure my wrist wasn’t, I shut the door, turned the key on the inside. In case any of his employees barged in and couldn’t see my side of it.

Then I looked around for a lead to Tildy. I frisked him. Went through his pockets, his wallet. What a collection!

Bills, letter from a skate manufacturer with a check in it, letter from a girl who’d been in the Icequadrille line asking for a loan, snapshots of girls, one of a boy wearing a polar-bear-cub costume, press clippings on Skate Mates, a deposition taken by some law firm in a damage suit, a typed report of a metabolism test he’d taken at a hospital recently, business cards from artists, costumers, musicians, advertising men, electricians — nothing about Tildy or where she might have gone.

I put the stuff back in the wallet, in his pockets, rummaged the desk. The only item which might have been of interest was the Manhattan Telephone Directory. Evidently he had the habit of scribbling numbers on the front cover of the phone book. There was one number that had been scribbled within a matter of minutes; it was in ink from a ball-point pen; it smudged a little when I rubbed my thumb across it.

A Lafayette number. I dialed it just on that outside chance. A gravel-voice gent at the other end said, “Blazer — Bill Every speaking.”

Blazer. The Blue Blazer, where Johnny the Grocer had rested his head in a puddle of blood! “Edie Eberlein there?”

“No,” stated Mister Every. “She was. But she stepped out for a short Coke or somethin’. She might be back. Want me to say who called?”

“Walch,” I said. “Keith Walch.”