Death of the Too-Cute Prostitute [= Man Alone]

Chapter Three

The front page was a body shot over a caption showing the police launch in the background and a pair of cops laying out the still wet figure of a woman. The story inside was accompanied by a full-face photo of a lovely girl in her late twenties with soft, flowing hair curling down around her shoulders highlighting a sensual, full-lipped smile. The picture was one taken from a wallet she had in her suit jacket and the brief news account stated that she was identified as Mildred Swiss from her Social Security card and driver’s license. No cause was given for the drowning, but the police suspected suicide and were checking all Missing Persons reports and looking for the next of kin.

I studied the face again, closer this time. The photo was more than a simple snapshot. The clarity was unusual and the posture too professional for an amateur job. And there was that thing about her mouth and the provocative slant to her eyes.

Not everybody was riding my back. Van Reeves in the records section and I had had too many contacts for him to pull out the stops and hedge on things like this. One time he had been caught in a trap too and knew what it was like. He was glad to hear from me and told me so.

I said, “Favor, Van.”

“Listening.”

“A girl was fished out of the river last night. Redhead named Mildred Swiss.”

“Yeah, I saw it.”

“Any request on her I.D. come through your department?”

“Not yet. Should it?”

“Eventually. They probably sent her prints directly to Washington, but see if she was listed as a cabaret performer in the city. She looks the type.”

“Will do. Can you hold on?”

“Sure.”

Van didn’t take long. He came back, picked up the phone and I could hear him rustling sheets of paper in his hand. “Got it, Regan. She’s a naturalized citizen of Polish origin with an unpronounceable last name. Last address is in the Fifties, but it won’t do you any good because they tore all that section down for a new hotel and she never renewed. Parents deceased, no listed relatives.”

“Who sponsored her into the country?”

“Parents. Home in Linden, New Jersey, where they died. Looks like they got here during the war and sent for her later. I’ll have to pass this on.”

“Anything in the other files?”

“No criminal record in this city. Something may turn up somewhere else. What are you thinking of?”

“She’s a type, Van.”

“Hunch or you know?”

“Just one of those things. Thanks.”

“No trouble. Glad you put me on it. Call anytime.”

“It’s nice to know you still have friends,” I said.

“Nuts. You’d be surprised. Now you’ll have more than ever.”

“Sure,” I told him sarcastically and hung up.

After so many years you begin to read the signs. You can see things in expressions and make the nuances of oblique fact channel themselves into paths nobody else would ever notice. It was part of being a cop and a part that nothing but experience and a tiny, ingrained feeling could give you.

Mildred Swiss looked like a type and her background had the little hooks you could hang certain probabilities on. She had steered me into a murder rap and now that it had come unglued, she was dead. Lucky coincidences just don’t come that often. The laws of chance are too strange, too varied.

I grinned and sucked my breath through my teeth, knowing that someplace out there in the crosshatch pattern of the city somebody was sitting and waiting, guts churning with anxiety because I was loose and I’d be looking. He’d be playing a big game and the stakes were absolute.

There was no coming back from the dead.

That was the absolute.

She occupied a suite of offices that took up a corner of the fourth floor of the new Galton-Mead building on Madison Avenue, an exclusive address catering only to the finest tenants or those prepared to pay an exorbitant rental.

Each door bore the gold-lettered name, Sturvesent Agency, a respected firm that handled some of the highest fashion models in the business and worked with nothing but the leading magazines in the field. Six leading movie stars and a few dozen big TV names had come from the Sturvesent list

So did a lot of others who never gained national prominence.

The Sturvesent Agency was a supplier of the fanciest call girls in town too.

A long time ago Madaline Stumper had started in a small way. Luck and diligent enterprise had gotten her to the top, but that curious quirk of nature that drew her into being a madam at nineteen had kept her in the sex business from then on, working at an executive level among the biggest business in the world, with friends in high places and an income that didn’t show in the tax forms.

It was a cute operation. In this crazy world some said it merely filled a demand that would always be there, catered to accepted organizational procedures and was as much a part of business as the clients who requested the services of her stable.

One thing about Miss Mad. She ran both ends with identical and remarkable efficiency. She had never taken a fall, and although she had been questioned on several occasions, a battery of high-priced lawyers quashed the whole thing and had her loose in a matter of minutes. All the department ever got were a few leaks, a word here and there that was too second hand to process and an idea of what she was up to. No disgruntled customers ever registered a complaint and no amount of undercover work ever pointed a condemning finger her way.

I walked in to where the silver blonde was sitting behind a polished mahogany desk, a full-bodied woman in her early thirties with eyes that could pick you clean in seconds and tabulate before you crossed the thick nylon rug from the door.

Her smile was friendly, but there was a frigidity in her eyes that said she could smell gun oil on me and see the hole in my wallet where the badge used to be pinned. She said, “Yes?” Nothing more. It was enough.

“Tell Miss Mad I’d like to see her. Pat Regan.”

Her eyebrows went up slowly, querulously, an unspoken challenge.

“We’re old friends,” I told her.

In a way we were. We had graduated from high school together and twice back in the neighborhood I had pulled a guy off her back who had been trying to make her the hard way and twice I had wound up bloody and sore.

Whatever was in my voice made a lie out of my grin. The receptionist wet her lips with the tip of her tongue and she didn’t push the matter. She spun the dial of her phone, held the husher mouthpiece up close so I couldn’t catch the conversation, then put it back and said, “Her secretary will be right out.”

“Thanks,” I nodded.

For five minutes I had time to watch the traffic. They came and went through the many doors, tall, emaciated women with necks that reminded me of what Mr. Guillotine thought of when he mechanized the chopping block. They all looked hungry, their cheekbones prominent, dresses and coats nipped in around hourglass waists, hair piled in the latest fashion and all flat chested as hell. Only a couple wore wedding rings and it was easy to see why. In bed it would be like having a few loose pipes aboard.

But not all of them were like that. Two happy, well-fed types came bouncing in, deliberately displaying a lot of flesh money-tailored in the kind of clothes that would turn any man inside out, pushed through the gate and went into one of the offices.

Before they came out the pert kid in the green dress tapped my arm and said, “This way, Mr. Regan.”

We went through a long corridor behind the other rooms, then turned and she opened a door. I thanked her, stepped inside and looked across the room at the stunning sight of the woman I used to fight over and said, “Hello, Mad.”

She was a composite of all the world’s beauties until you reached her eyes, then you saw in the great depths of those almost-black orbs that matched the silky sheen of her hair the vast depths of a cavern that held an unknown life of their own.

Only for a second did they seem to fill up with what should have been there in the first place, then whatever it was receded a little... there, but not showing all the way. Her mouth was a flower that blossomed red, accented by the white of even teeth, and one corner had a tiny grin to it. “Regan. Well, well.”

“It’s been a long time.”

“Not really. I’ve been reading about you.”

“Hasn’t everybody?”

Madaline Stumper stood up and held out her hand to me. No matter who she had working for the agency, they could never touch her. Her grip was firm and warm, mocking sincerity in her hello. Beneath the black dress she was a woman of physical beauty rarely seen any more. High breasts that dared you with every curving line, taut stomach muscles that ebbed and flowed like a tide into generous thighs that held a fluid, hungry stance unknowingly deliberate, a gesture she had ever since she was a kid.

I let go her hand and dragged a chair up with my foot, waited until she sat down and slouched into it. “You’re looking damn good, kid.”

She let the grin go wide a moment. “What a choice of words. The other day the president of A.T.P. took an hour to tell me the same thing.”

“I haven’t got the time.”

“You never did,” she said.

“So I wasn’t much for words.”

“Just fighting,” she smiled languidly. “Was it for a good cause?”

“I thought so at the time.”

“And now?” she asked purposely.

“Time marches on. We all change.”

Her eyes flashed with that look again and there was a sadness there. “It’s too bad. Maybe some things can’t be helped.”

“Maybe they can.”

“Oh?”

I watched her a good ten seconds, then asked, “Ever know a redhead named Mildred Swiss?”

“I read the papers.”

“I didn’t ask you that.”

“Regan...”

“Just say yes or no.”

“Can it be that simple?”

I knew what she was getting at. I pulled out my wallet, let it dangle open so she could see the pinholes in it and the impression that my badge had made against the leather after so many years of being compressed there. I said, “Let me put it this way. I know about the agency and I know about the sideline. If I wanted to I could probably break the thing, but there’s never been a demand for it so I’m not pushing. If we got on you there would be so much hell to pay with the pressure that would come on from the power circles it wouldn’t be worth the effort. I’m not here officially and frankly, I don’t give a damn what you do with your time and energy. It’s a sophisticated world these days, they tell me. Nobody gets the scarlet letter pinned on any more and what used to be condemned is currently condoned. Maybe it will get better and maybe it will get worse. It isn’t my job to buck the trend. I just do what I’m told to do and do it damn well. At the moment I’m trying to do something on my own. I asked you a question. It doesn’t go down in the files and I’m not saving up information until later.”

“You are a wordy bastard after all, Regan.” Her mouth opened and she laughed at me pleasantly. “All right, yes. I knew her. She didn’t work for me.”

“True, kid?”

“True, Regan.”

“How did you know of her?”

Madaline shrugged and pushed back a wave of raven hair from her face. “Things come to me. One has to know the competition even if they’re small operators. I can make out quite a list like her from memory.”

“Whore?”

“Not the usual variety. She was on call with the Mays setup until the District Attorney broke it, then she was seen around working independently.” She frowned, then added, “Not really working at it... more like she was looking for something solid.”

“Marriage?”

Madaline nodded noncommittally. “Inwardly, they’re all like that, I think.”

“What about you?” I prodded, grinning.

Her eyes held steadily on mine. “I thought about it once. It would never have worked. I’ve seen too much of the raw thing.” The black deep was there again before she looked away.

“Anything work for the Swiss girl?”

“Not that I know of. She settled into an apartment and was kept on the side by Ray Hilquist.”

“The bookie?”

Madaline bobbed her head. “Confidante of millionaires. Probably the biggest in the area until he died in that accident.”

I didn’t bother telling her that it wasn’t an accident. It looked that way because it was planned that way and no evidence could prove differently, but to a pro the thing smelled of murder and the books were still open on it. High finance bookie operations were syndicate business and somewhere along the line Ray Hilquist had soured out.

“What was she doing before she died?” I asked her quietly.

Again, that little shrug. Madaline said, “I didn’t follow her career. She probably passed on into other hands.” She turned her head and looked at me, a funny expression on her face. “I can ask around,” she said. “Shall I?”

I got up and put on my hat, unconsciously hitching up the service revolver that wasn’t there any more. “I’d appreciate it,” I said. I walked to the door, stopped and turned around. “Lunch sometime?”

Madaline grinned at me like she did the time I took the guys off her back. “I’d appreciate it,” she repeated in my own solemn tones.

On Saturday George Lucas met me outside the building where they had the departmental hearing with that same crooked grin and handed me the large manila envelope holding the five thousand dollars somebody had made me a present of for the favor of committing murder. “We had it made, buddy.”

“The commissioners didn’t think so.”

“Okay, so you’re on suspension until the details of the missing Marcus files are cleared up. At least they’re only attributing it to negligence. The most you can get is a reduction in grade and a beat in the wilderness.”

“Five grand isn’t worth it.”

“You forgot my ten percent.”

“So deduct it.” I held the package out.

He didn’t touch it. “I already did,” he laughed. “Now can we get down to business? How about some chowder at Vinnie’s?”

A cab took us there and Vinnie gave us a table at the back of the room. We were the only ones in the place. I was wondering if Jerry Nolan would show up, but it was still a little early for him.

George held out his package of butts and I shook my head. He lit one up for himself and sucked in a haze of smoke. “How was the plant made in your apartment, Pat?”

“No trouble. Commercial type lock. Whoever got in used a key.”

“Who has access to yours?”

I grunted at him and rubbed the stubble on my jaw. “I went all over that. Two possibilities. Somebody had a regular passkey that bonded locksmiths use or an impression was made from my own. It’s on the same ring as my car keys and when I park it and use a department car I forget the damn things sometimes.”

George’s eyes half shut. “Argenio?”

“Why not?”

“You think he’d go that far?”

I shrugged, thinking about the way he hated my guts. “He wouldn’t be the first one.”

“That puts him on the take.”

All I did was look at him.

“Nobody’s ever laid anything on him,” he said.

“Argenio smells bad,” I told him.

“Say it slowly.”

“He enjoys the rough stuff. I’ve seen him deliberately... oh, hell.”

“Go on.”

“It’s nothing I can explain.” I stared across the table at him. “Remember Welch, the cop on the south side we called the Dutchman?”

“How can I forget him.”

“So he killed six or seven guys. Line of duty stuff, but he enjoyed it. Later he went too far with his pleasures and wound up doing time. Argenio’s like that.”

“You can’t prosecute on suspicions, friend.”

“Maybe I’ll frame him,” I said.

“I wouldn’t put it past you.”

I grinned at his tight expression and said, “Maybe I won’t have to. My nose tells me he’s not a square cop. One day he’ll fall. Just don’t sweat me, Georgie. I won’t louse it up. Now let’s get with the business.”

I took an hour to give him the details of what I had lined up on Marcus’ operation and the probable way they could set it up again. I had lived with it so long I was thinking like them and could almost see the rearrangement. George let me finish, taking it all down and stored his notes in his pocket.

“Okay,” he said, “I’ll get on it. Your loot ought to buy enough help to make it easier. Call me every once in a while.”

“Don’t worry.” He laid a bill on the table to cover the check and walked out.

When he was gone I dialed Jerry Nolan at his office, and when he was on I said, “Regan, Jerry.”

“I heard the results of the trial.”

“Not over yet. They’ll have to kick the negligence bit out What I did was S.O.P. and you know it.”

“I hope the commission does. What’s up?”

“Get me copies of the body shots of Marcus. I’m at Vinnie’s.”

“Hell, man, you saw them,” he said.

“So I want to do it again. I’m thinking straighter now.”

Jerry let out a resigned breath over the phone. “Okay, stay there. Give me a half hour.”

Twenty minutes later he was sitting where George had been and I had the eight-by-ten glossies spread out in front of me. They weren’t very pretty. Four different angles were covered, the details clear in every one. All six shots had taken Leo Marcus in his face, the first one blowing off the pinkey of his left hand as he tried to protect himself from his killer in that last second. Blood, brain, bone and hair were splattered against the fieldstone of the fireplace and the rest of him was lying in the remains of the fire that had cooked the top part of his torso to charred remains.

“Nice job,” I commented drily.

Jerry looked at me, his face tight “We would have bought the mistaken identity bit if it weren’t for the finger. It was stuck under the mantle. Two teeth from his plate were smashed into the log and three others with part of the plastic work intact were on the floor. In this case it was a special job and identifiable. The oral surgeon who did the work gave us an absolute position and our lab confirmed it”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Nothing else he could be identified by?”

“Hell, who needed it? No... nothing. No surgery, no broken bones, but if you don’t think we didn’t go all the way, get this. We brought in two of his broads. They took a damn close look at his privates and confirmed. You like that bit?”

“No.”

Jerry gave an exasperated snort. “Why not?”

“When they saw him before he was in a highly emotional state.”

“Oh, balls.”

“That’s what I mean.”

I sat there looking at the mess that had been Leo Marcus, the mess that I had made. There was no remorse, just the antagonizing feeling that I hadn’t been alive enough to know what I had done because if it had been me I would have wanted to see every damn slug splash into his fat face, the same goddamn face that had broken others with a single look and had winked more into sudden death because they had displeased him. That one face had hooked kids into the big H, steered the unknowing into the bright eyed things that knew all the answers and died early by their own hands, squeezed too many into shapeless forms whose minds were his... people, but not by the standards I knew.

“Jerry...”

“What?”

“I wish it had been me.”

“You sure it wasn’t?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“It wouldn’t have happened so fast. I would have destroyed him slowly then let the law take care of him in that terrible, tantalizing way it has until he sat there crowded up against the arms of the big chair in Sing with the hood over his head and the electrodes on with all the witnesses watching and hoped he could hear them puke when the top of his head started to smoke from the juice going through him. No, it wasn’t me.”

“I know,” Jerry said. “Now I know.”

“You do? Why?”

“Because you aren’t capable of simple murder. I’ve seen you smoke out killers before. You lived with this one too damn long, Regan.”

“I’m still living with it.”

“Then give me the answers.”

I shuffled the photos like cards and stacked them and handed them back to him. “Somebody’s on top of Marcus. His time was up. They wanted him out and they got him out. I was the sucker to take the heat off them. It didn’t work.”

“Who, Regan?” Jerry asked me. His face was a blank mask, a professional mask no different from the one the punks saw in the interrogation rooms.

“Find out. That’s your business. I don’t carry a badge any more.”

“Or a gun?”

“I might do that. The hoods don’t mind. The punks take pleasure in it. The proper civilians terrified by the stupid Sullivan Act and forgetting they have the protection of the Constitution unrestricted by jerks are too obsessed by legal interpretations to pack one when they should may be like that. But not me, Jerry. I’m not a proper civilian any more.”

“You haven’t been kicked off the force.”

“You’re damn right.”

“Stay cool, buddy.”

“Like hell. You know better. We can’t exist cool, can we? Somebody has to move. It’s my neck on the block.”

“So you processed it. If anybody was in a position to know who was on top of Marcus, it’s Patrick Regan... you. Something had to show. He was hand picked by the rest of the Syndicate... he worked his way up, proved his worth every damn inch of the way and was a power. You don’t blast power out that easily. They have their own machine inside the big one and coups d’état aren’t easy.”

“For someone it was,” I reminded him.

“You’re crazy,” he said.

“That’s what the D.A.’s lad tried as a last resort when the trial was on.”

“Shit.”

“What else is new?”

To keep calm, Jerry grabbed at his butts, lit up a smoke and deliberately sat back looking at the ceiling. “Give me one idea,” he finally mused.

“Did Van Reeves contact you about the Swiss broad?”

“Uh-huh.”

“She was the redhead, buddy.”

His eyes came down from the ceiling and searched my face. “Now you tell me.”

“Last contact was Ray Hilquist. She lived with him.”

“You son of a bitch. Where do you pick it up?”

“I’m fighting for my life,” I said. “Remember?”

Jerry took another pull on the cigarette, his features thoughtful now. “Hilquist and Leo Marcus used to be tied in together. Just little things. Nothing worth pulling them for, but they were close.” He wasn’t looking at me now. He was reviewing the records mentally, pulling out the files in his mind the way cops do, remembering the little things that count. “They had a split once,” he told me. “A broad was involved. Word got out that the wheels in the Syndicate called a meeting and pulled them back together, otherwise it was an ‘or else’ deal. They didn’t like some twist interfering with business. No sweat after that. Too much action was involved. You have posed an interesting thought, Regan.”

“Keep on it.”

“I will.” He leveled his eyes at me. “But you stay cool,” he said as he got up. “When you’re thinking you scare me.”

“I’ll scare a lot of people before it’s through,” I told him.