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

Chapter Four

Stan the pencil wasn’t hard to find. Like all the rest, he had his money rounds; the habituals with the two bucks, the fivers, the ten spots who waited for him in the right places to pick up their cash and slap it on the nose of some nag running the circuit. To him it was a living, two fifty a week with a few weeks in the workhouse when the administration needed a patsy to pad the news reports.

All expenses paid and his wife and kids supported while he was staring at the bars wondering when the legislature would legalize off-track betting like the people wanted despite the pious claims of the backwards-collar gooks and the political slobs who went their way.

I found him at The Shamrock making his book in a cheap pad, his eyes too suddenly round at what he saw in my face. I said, “Talk, Stan. Let’s take a table somewhere.”

“Look...”

“I’m off the force, Stan, but I can still break you in little pieces. Here and now. Your choice.”

“So all right. Talk. It’s cheap.”

I grabbed his arm, pushed him to a table and called for a couple of beers. When the waiter brought the steins I sipped the top off mine and put it down and watched the wet circles it made on the table top. “You were there that night, Stan.”

“Was I called as a witness?”

“Nope.”

I let my eyes drift up to his, feeling the air go through my teeth again. “You’ve been around, boy. You know the ropes and the angles. Nothing gets past your kind. I thought nothing did through me, but something did. What was it?”

“Look, Mr. Regan...”

“Think, buddy. It’s your arm. Left or right first?”

Stan The Pencil was scared. His throat bobbed convulsively and a vein in his temple throbbed too damn hard. “Mr. Regan... it was like they said. You got looped. Hell, I’d do what I could if...”

“There was something. I came in that bar sober.”

“You had a headache. You was eating aspirins.”

“I’d just bought them, Stan. An unopened box at the drugstore on the corner. I had six. It’s an occupational hazard.”

“So I didn’t see nothing. No kidding, Mr. Regan...”

“Who slipped me a dose?”

He could hardly keep his hands folded in front of him. “Honest, Mr. Regan, it was like you had too much. So who was there? Them crazy artists, Popeye Lewis and Edna Rells, they ain’t done nothing. Who could louse you up? You know old Popeye. He got nothing going for him except his paintings and fifty million bucks he hates. That nutty Edna he lives with is just as bad. All that loot and they shack up in a garret even if he does own the whole joint. He won’t live off nothing his old man left him, just what they make with that crazy smear they sell. Me, so what did I do? Make a few contacts? I thought it was a good party.”

“Where did the redhead come in?”

“Who knows?” he said. “Dames were all over the place.”

“You saw her?”

“I saw plenty of broads. She latched on when you started the big pitch. Come on, Mr. Regan.”

“How long have I known you, Stan?”

“Like maybe five years.”

“Ever get yanked?”

“Hell, you weren’t on that detail.”

“Phones were all over the place,” I reminded him. “I could have assigned it anytime.”

“All right, all right. You were square. What you want from me, anyway?”

“The redhead.”

Stan The Pencil’s hands were in tight knots, the fingers twisted together. “Like she drifted over. You pitched, she caught. I cut out about then. I don’t know from nothing. I told them all that.”

“You know her?” I watched him closely.

He caught the funny look in my eyes and said, “I know her now. Not before. I seen it in the papers.”

“Let’s think back.”

“What for?”

“Leo Marcus and Hilquist.”

“Mr. Regan...”

“Stop bullshitting me.”

His face got sullen and his eyes dropped to his hands.

I said, “What’s the racket talk?”

“Some broad,” Stan said softly. “This gonna hurt me?”

“No.”

“Marcus fixed it. What difference does it make now?”

“Because I got fixed too,” I said.

Very simply he looked up and said, “I’m more scared of them than you, Mr. Regan. What now?”

“Nothing, buddy,” I said. “You can blow now.” He hadn’t told me anything, but he’d think he had and he’d be different later.

I got out and walked. My apartment was fifteen blocks away but I had to think about it. A month gone sitting on a bail bond because they wanted to get it over with in a hurry, the eyes of a guy who had been close friends looking at you speculatively, the hatred of the press and the animosity of the public because they thought a hard-working career cop took five grand instead of his life’s work. Nuts.

The rain started in a gentle mist at first, working up to a great gout that caught me on the corner of Eighth Avenue and Forty-ninth and when I walked through it, ignoring all its malicious fury, developed a rumble with heat lightning in the west that growled its displeasure at me.

I said, “Drop dead,” toward the sky and kept walking while people watched curiously. Screw them too, I thought. If they knew who I was, they’d spit. The killer cop. He had gotten away with murder.

Well, thank somebody for twelve good men and true who had bought the story.

I hoped they were right.

There was still a chance they weren’t.

I went over it again, knowing the odds I was up against. I reached the apartment and studied the old brownstone from the outside, realizing that anybody could get inside there. Hell, for a pro, you could get anywhere. A key was easy to get. I inserted my own in the lock, turned it and pushed the door open. It was only a three room flat you could expect a bachelor cop to occupy, nothing special no matter how hard you looked. The only extravagance was the wall safe with nothing in it outside a will, a birth certificate and two diplomas, compliments of the butcher downstairs who thought I needed more security. The Marcus file had been stowed in the false bottom of the rectangular bottom of the waste basket by the old desk I used, a nothing place an ordinary housebreaker would have missed and a pro looking for the right thing in the right place found. The five grand was in a new place, too damn obvious, an area above the unpainted pine that formed a ceiling in the bedroom closet.

It was newly cut and that was what had made it all the more damning.

Out of curiosity I checked the apartment. The signs of white dust from the print teams the department sent in were still showing on the furniture, wisps here and there like an untidy woman would make from powdering after a bath, the stigmata of the professionals taking care of their own. Or frying him if they had to.

I lay down on the bed, listening to the air going out of the mattress with a soft hiss and closed my eyes, thinking of how nice it was to sleep and be away from it all. There was a sweet smell of pleasure there, a sensual odor of the far-off things that could never be attained for someone like me and sleep was the utmost pinnacle of desire. It was a gentle, wafting breeze that talked to me from way down deep and out of the downy fluffiness of it all I could hear a strange voice that had turned us into the wild assed bastards they couldn’t beat with all of the Nazi deviousness and the man kept saying, “They’ll try anything. If it’s foreign to you, cut out and run. Shoot. No matter who. Blow out your breath and get away. They have chemical warfare to offset our superiority in noxious gases. They want you. Remember... YOU. You have information. They’ll do anything. They’ll do...”

My eyes opened on his words as if I were years back in a different place and I remembered the rules. I cut and ran, hit the door, opened it and lay face down in the empty doorway gasping for breath while my senses came back to me.

I was lucky. It had all seemed so nice. Like freezing to death in the snow when you thought you were nice and warm all the time. I found the unlabeled can under the mattress that had been activated by my weight. A simple thing that could have been a shaving cream container or a deodorant spray if it hadn’t been a deadly sleep inducer from which I never would have awakened.

After the windows were opened and the odor gone, I stuck the can in the refrigerator, locked up and dropped into the sleep I should have had in the beginning.

Somebody really wanted me dead in the worst way.

Even when you’re a cop with a cloud over you, certain avenues are open. I took the canister up to the lab, where Sergeant Ted Marker looked at it before turning it over to the other specialists, letting me sit in the big chair by his desk while we waited for the analysis report.

For me, they did it fast. Ted’s assistant came back in an hour with the can and an elaborate report. Ted studied it a moment before laying it on his desk, then read it over again to be sure. “German compound,” he finally said. “We called it FS-7, Roderick Formula.”

“What’s that mean?”

He peeled off his glasses and looked at me. “Nerve gas. Unassuming and deadly. The trap was cute. You’re supposed to be dead. What’s inside you, Regan?”

“I’m motivated.”

“Stop the crap.”

Ted let a smile flicker across his usually glum face. “It was set up very easily. Like all aerosol bombs, small pressure sets it off. It was put under the springs of your bed. You pushed the button yourself.”

“I’m glad I didn’t have company.”

“The value of being a lonely bachelor,” he smiled.

“Knock it off.” I leaned forward in the chair. “It isn’t a domestic compound?”

“I haven’t seen it since ’45. One of the end products of the Nuremberg trials. It was exposed there.”

“Like Sentol?”

“You think a lot, Regan.”

“I’m supposed to,” I threw at him. “What about the container?”

“German surplus. Somebody has access to unauthorized supplies. Outside of what was released to our own agencies, this stuff was all supposed to be destroyed.”

“Somebody had a sense of the future,” I grimaced.

His answer was quick. “Why?”

“To take care of people like me.”

He nodded, looked at the report a moment, then came back to me. “Some have a great sense of timing. They think ahead. They can wait.”

“How could they get this stuff?”

Ted made a gesture with his shoulders. “How do the punks get guns?”

“That easy?”

“That easy. Money can buy almost anything.”

I got up and put my hat on, thinking of the five grand somebody had left in my room. “Almost,” I said.

Al Argenio came in as I said it, a small box in his hand. He hadn’t shaved that morning and his face had a hard, swarthy look, a guy who had been up all night. He was all badge, gun and efficiency, and he gave me a hard leer and said, “What are you doing here, bum?”

He thought I was going to walk past him and ignore the remark. It was the second mistake he made with me. I laid one on those black chops of his that slammed him into the wall with a glassy stare in his eyes, awake enough to hear what I said but not awake enough to do anything about it. “Watch your tongue, slob,” I said.

The others looked at me, hid their grins and didn’t stop me from going out. None of them liked him either.

Downstairs, I used the pay phone to call the Murray Hill number. The one in the book got me to the PBX board, but the old badge number and the tone of voice got me Miss Mad on a private phone, that cool voice with the throaty timbre saying hello with that little tinge of anticipation I had hoped to hear and I said, “Regan, sugar. We alone?”

“I hope so.”

“Lunch?”

“I hope so.”

“You won’t get shook? A cop isn’t exactly a company president.”

“In your circles I wouldn’t be considered great company for a date unless it was in the line of duty, would I?”

“My circles aren’t the old ones right now, honey... so it’s a date. The Blue Ribbon on Forty-fourth?”

“You never change, do you?”

“Why should I, baby?” I asked her. “About two-thirty... the crowd will be gone.”

The crowd was gone, but the regulars were there, saw her come in and join me and grinned in appreciation. She went through the bar, crossed into the booth behind Angie and sat down in the chair he held out for her.

“How many years has it been, Patrick?”

“Maybe twenty-five.”

“The first time you ever asked me out to lunch before.”

“Would you have accepted before?”

Something had happened to her eyes. The bottomless well wasn’t there any more. “You’ll never know,” she said. “Shall we wait to eat or talk now? I know it isn’t a cruise for you.”

“Let’s keep it like between old friends. You’re easy on the eyes and it makes talking a pleasure.”

“Okay, old friend. Just don’t ask me one question.”

I anticipated what she had in her mind and said, “Like what made you get into the racket in the first place?”

Madaline nodded sagely. “I might decide to tell the truth for a change. I never have before. The others all expected nice scandalous statements tinged with sensuality they could savor with all the gusto of a gourmet and I fed them what they wanted to hear. The truth is very simple and quite sordid.”

“Then save it until you’re ready.”

She watched me, her fingers toying with the napkin, “You’re probably the only one who would understand it.”

The waiter took our orders then, brought a pair of drinks to sip at while we waited for the duckling he had suggested and I lifted the glass in a silent toast. “To now, Mad.”

She winked, sampled the drink and put it down slowly. “I have news for you, Regan.”

I waited.

“Let’s call it hearsay. No confirmation. For your information I put the question to some of the kids and it didn’t take them long to come up with some oddball facts.”

“Like what?”

“Ray Hilquist may have set up Mildred Swiss, but she wasn’t completely cooperative. She had been seen around with Leo Marcus in out-of-the-way places while she was supposed to be keeping Hilquist’s bed warm.”

“What the hell did Leo have to pull in a broad like her?”

Madaline pursed her mouth and shrugged. “Who can tell about women, Regan? Maybe they like most what they can’t have.”

“You know the Syndicate stepped in and cleaned up the deal?”

She nodded gently and picked up her drink. “That’s the strange part.”

“What is?”

“Leo was much bigger than Hilquist. It should have gone in his favor if there was a squabble.” She drank, put the glass down and asked me, “Ever consider that?”

“I gave it a thought. Maybe they didn’t figure little Millie Swiss was right for their top man. Okay for Hilquist, but something Marcus wouldn’t miss after a while.”

“Possibly. They use computers in the rackets these days.” Then she shook her head again, her face thoughtful. “I don’t buy it. I’ve seen too damn much. I know those people...”

“Oh?”

She said, “It was in the last couple of weeks before you shot... before Marcus was killed he was seen with Mildred Swiss. The kids told me it looked like love... all quiet and cozy, stars in her eyes, hand holding under the table and that sort of garbage. She was still in the apartment Hilquist had... the lease was paid in advance and he had left her enough spending money to keep her going for a year anyway after he died.” Madaline grinned at me. “She was a lucky little twist. Most of them don’t make out that well.”

“A cozy situation,” I said. “If Marcus did go for the broad he could have arranged Hilquist’s accident, then took his time about moving in so no finger gets pointed at him.”

“You’re forgetting one thing,” she said.

“What?”

“The wheels in the Syndicate don’t like intramural rivalries. They’d go after anybody acting independently of their instructions, especially if it would jeopardize their operations.”

“That only leaves two conclusions then,” I said. “Either it was an accident or they arranged for it to happen.”

“What do you think, Regan?”

“I don’t know. It’ll all too damn pat.”

Before we could get into it deeper the waiter brought the lunch in and set down the plates. At the same time a foursome drifted by, picked the table next to us and sat down, so we relaxed into casual conversation, finished and went back out to Forty-fourth Street, where we waited for a cab.

I flagged one down and helped her into it, keeping my eyes off the flash of white that showed above the nylon hose momentarily, and she grinned when she spotted my prudishness. I said, “Check it out further if you can. I’ll be at the apartment this evening and you can reach me there.”

Madaline made a kiss of her lips and nodded. “Sure. I like to pay off my obligations.”

“Go...”

“Uh-uh... none of that talk,” she laughed.

Popeye Lewis and Edna Rells had been playing at the common-law marriage game for a long time. In the beginning they had been part of the freedom loving sect who had a distaste for permanent ties and decided to try it on for size until it was over, but after four years it still wasn’t ended and they had taken on all the semblance of old married couples without the benefit of law.

The building Popeye had bought with the millions he inherited was the only dip into the estate his father had left him. The renovations came out of his earnings as an oil painter and it was hurting him to be successful. He and Edna would rather have lived as true peasants. Between the two of them they had a five-figure annual income, a crazy sex life and were the envy of the phonies who ran down their talents at the same time they cultivated them for their whiskey handouts and fabulous parties.

Popeye waved me in, a brush between his teeth and his beard clotted with paint. Edna was studying a half-finished canvas, standing beside a full length mirror with a smock thrown over her hastily. I knew she had nothing on under it. The picture was a profile nude of herself and she was her own model. She was irritated at the interruption, stamped her foot with impatience and grinned, “Why the hell should I be bashful on your account, Regan? You know what a naked woman looks like?”

I glanced at the picture. “Now I do.”

“Then go talk to Popeye,” she told me. With a hitch of her shoulders she tossed the smock off and went back to studying herself in the mirror and putting the impression down on the canvas. She was quite a woman. Quite. But somehow there was no indecency to it at all. It was like looking at a bowl of fruit. Not really... but something like that.

Popeye ignored it all and popped open a can of beer and held it out to me. “I was going to send a card of congratulations, Regan. I didn’t know if you’d appreciate the joke.”

“Wouldn’t have mattered.”

He pushed over a bar stool and wiped it off. “Sit down. What’s the word?”

“The redhead.”

“Ah, yes, the redhead.”

“It didn’t come out at the trial.”

“One of many that night, my boy. What about her?”

“She’s dead.”

“So I heard. Spud mentioned it in passing this morning.”

“You saw the papers?”

“I did and she was there.” He drank half the can off without a stop, took a deep breath and went on. “You were riding high, that night, buddy-o. I played it down on the stand... just answered the questions, but if I didn’t know you better I’d say you were mainlining for the first time. I never saw you like that before. What the hell happened?”

“You think I killed Leo Marcus?”

“Regan, I couldn’t care less... but no. You talked it up a lot, but you’re too square for that kind of action. Where’d you really get the load?”

“Somebody goosed me with a mickey.”

“Who? That kind of stuff doesn’t go at the Climax. Not with a cop, even for a joke.”

“It wasn’t a joke.”

Popeye dumped the rest of the beer down, opened another can and offered me one. When I shook my head he said, “Why were you there, friend? That wasn’t your beat any more.”

“Al Argenio used to go with a hatcheck girl from the place.”

“Ah, Helen the Melons. Quite a spoonful. Size forty-four chest. They weren’t simpatico, kiddily. He used his badge to bump the opposition out of the way and that old Helen the Melons didn’t like. She craved attention and appreciation of her superabundant mammaries. That was her come on, her stock in trade, her excuse of the un-necessity of education and her hope for the future. She did great with casual trade, but to get close to her you’d have to stand behind her or be crowded out of the way. Now you give me Edna there, who is only a simple thirty-eight...”

“Go up a stick,” Edna said without taking her eyes off the mirror.

“True artist type,” Popeye smiled.

“What happened to the melons?”

Popeye nursed his beer again and grunted. “Too much Al Argenio. She asked for a transfer. Nobody told poor Al... he wasn’t the popular type... but she’s over in Brooklyn at the Lazy Daisy inhaling at the natives.”

“What’s this transfer bit?”

He put the can down and picked up a cigarette. His eyes were suddenly sober. “You know the Climax?”

“How?”

“Check the ownership. Like it’s a Lesbian joint mostly and the squares come in for a look and pay the freight. It cracks a big nut. One of the many holdings in the hands of that abstraction you people call the Syndicate.”

“Who passed that on?”

“My lawyer who’s beating his balls off to get me straightened out. He has me followed, tries to prove I lead a life not conducive to a solid citizen who owns most of three corporations and can draw on a fat bank account. He just don’t know, man. He shows me where I hang out in a den of iniquity run by a nest of thieves. He wants me back in grey flannel suits attending board meetings.”

“I thought Stucker owned the Climax.”

“You aren’t hep, old boy. Maybe it looks like he does, but he pays off to some funny people then. I’ve been around there a long time and it was Leo Marcus’ boys who made those weekly visits. But just don’t try to buck the system. It’s liable to explode on you. They have accountants and machines and front men all making up to a tidy little sub rosa government that pulls a lot of weight. You see what it cost you for prying.”

“You seem to know a lot, Popeye.”

“I got big ears, a lot of talkative friends and a sharp insight into this wild world of money-hungry denizens. Why do you think I pulled out of it?”

“Everybody to their own taste.” I looked at him, flipping the empty can into a trash basket. “You never finished with the redhead.”

“So she was there. So were a lot of others. You were quite a card.”

Edna Rells stepped out from behind the canvas, a lovely naked figure with a paint streak just above her navel and a brush tucked in her hair. “With all the crowding, Spud couldn’t get to the table. She took the tray and served the drinks. One belt later and you were all over her.”

“Thanks, sugar.”

It had been as easy as that. She was planted there or had followed me there. She picked the right time and loaded me. I picked up my hat and pushed myself off the bar stool. “See you around,” I said. “I appreciate the talk.”

“What talk? You came here to discuss art,” Popeye said solemnly.

I looked at Edna who twisted her hips and threw a bump at me with a leer. Only the brush came out of her hair and left a smear across one ample nipple when it fell. “Yeah, art. I’m all for it. You guys are nuts.”

The redhead, Leo Marcus and me. Somebody had missed the boat in planning the State’s case. They should have tied in the redhead and I would have been on the death list at Sing Sing. The D.A. could have made it look like we were in it together to knock off Marcus, that in my hatred I had somehow recruited her. Now she was out of it altogether and if they wanted to build a new case they could try it on me for size. Sooner or later the D.A.’s boys would be asking questions, they’d have some answers to Mildred Swiss’ past and they’d be asking me where I was when she was dumped.

So... where was I? My contacts had been limited. I had been walking and thinking. I was ready to be a patsy again. I needed an alibi, but before I could nail it down I had to find out when she had died.

I waited until I saw Ted Marker come out of the building and followed him from across the street and half a block back to the subway station, made sure none of the others were around and caught up with him as he was buying tokens from the attendant on the platform. He could have used his badge to go through the gate for free but never bothered to. I came up beside him, got two tokens and said, “Wait for me, Ted.”

He nodded curiously, went through the turnstile and stood behind the crowd of commuters. We went three stops and upstairs to a bar and grill where everybody was watching the last inning of a ball game and ordered a pair of beers at the counter.

“What’s it about, Pat?”

“How’d the make go through on Mildred Swiss?”

“Checked right out.”

“They establish the time of death?”

“On the nose. The Medical Examiner’s autopsy report checked with a watch in her pocket that had stopped. Five-fifteen.”

“Why was the watch in her pocket?”

“Because the clasp had been broken.”

“It was daylight then,” I said. “They don’t usually go in during the day. Not female suicides. They think about their hair and their clothes and the water isn’t a good prospect for death. It’s filthy with garbage and sewerage and stinks.”

“That’s suicide. She was murdered.”

I looked at him.

“Fingernails broken from where she clawed somebody apparently. Her hands had been well manicured. She had a bruise on her head that could have knocked her out. There was a hairdressing appointment on a card in her wallet for the next day. She made the date by phone and didn’t seem disturbed at all.”

“It figures. One odd thing.”

“What’s that?” Ted asked.

“Why didn’t the body sink?”

“Simple. She was hung up on a piece of driftwood, a plank with one end waterlogged had nails that snagged her clothes. She wasn’t in the water very long at all.”

Mentally, I checked the time. I had been in the apartment all that while and nobody had seen me come in or spoken to me until I had gotten Spud’s message. It didn’t have to be planned that way, but it could put me back in the hot water again. The other alternative was that somebody wanted Mildred Swiss dead, just plain dead and quickly.

Ted finished his beer and said without taking his eyes from the TV: “Where do you fit in, Regan?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“I’m feeling your line of thought.”

“Not good, is it?”

“Uh-uh,” he told me. Then: “I asked some questions about that sleep gas. It took a while, but a smart boy in Washington provided some answers. Right after the war a batch got into this country mixed in a surplus deal. They couldn’t pin it down, but there was a shady aspect about it. About ninety percent was recovered from the Ross and Buttick Warehouse where it was stored by a company who imported it among other things. Bensilee Imports. Legitimate firm operating since 1919.”

“Who broke it down?”

“The O.S.S. discovered the stuff missing, then Washington moved and working with our department located the stuff. It was taken out to sea and dumped. Lot of publicity on it when it happened. They were afraid some kids would get into the stuff thinking it was DDT or something. The citizenry sent in truckloads of stuff for inspection, but none of it was that FS-7 derivative of the Roderick Formula.”

Another little piece, I thought. Publicity alerted the public to the potential dangers of the stuff, but it could have aroused the curiosity of other parties to its potential for their own activities.

I said, “Any deaths attributed to its use?”

Ted Marker turned his head and said, “I was wondering when you’d ask. The man in Washington said there were two prominent Syndicate defectors who died mysteriously from undetected causes. It’s a possibility, but wasn’t detected. In each case the M.E. wasn’t familiar with FS-7. Only the prominence of the dead men kept it open.”

“And if I had died it would have looked like a natural thing... nobody would have shaken the room down and probed under the bed for a can until the landlord or a new tenant did... or the guy who planted the stuff came back. It could have been easy... he could have posed as a reporter, a new tenant... anybody.”

“Cute. Again I say you were lucky.”

“Nope... just filled with natural instincts.” I finished the beer and waved to the bartender for another round. “They figure out where the redhead got it?”

“Roughly. The tide was incoming, the rate of drift and time of death put it in the dock area around the Forties... providing the plank that held her didn’t get snagged along the way. In that case it would have happened farther up. Anyplace along there you find traffic, drifters... well, hell, you know the area. Even in daylight it could have been arranged.”

“Yeah, sure,” I agreed.

Ted looked at his watch and I knew he was anxious to get going. “One more thing. I read everything available on the Sentol product. One thing it doesn’t induce... in fact, inhibits it... is a person under its influence passing out.”

“I was out cold when they found me there.”

“That’s what I mean. Sentol keeps the user awake like the goof balls the truckers use, but acting in strange directions.”

“Positive?”

He nodded, his face grim.

“In that case I did it all on my own... that what you’re thinking?”

“What do you think, Regan?” he asked me.

“A factor has been missed somewhere. Thanks for the time. Let’s go.”