Masquerade for Murder

Chapter Ten

The night mist was going to turn into something — the sky’s rumbling stomach said so. Whether it would be rain or snow remained to be seen. Right now it just filled the air, giving soft halos to streetlights and a neon-reflecting slickness to the street, where headlights sent smudgy beams into a darkness that would only get darker.

That dust-up in the dark at Shannon’s pad may have almost killed me, but that had been a matter of avoiding a knee to the chest; otherwise I felt fine and didn’t figure I showed enough damage to attract Velda’s attention when I headed for our regular back booth at the Olde English Tavern on Third Avenue. We’d agreed to meet at ten and I was on time. She was already there.

I slid in opposite her and noticed she was frowning, just a little. She was still wearing the lime silk blouse and forest-green skirt she’d worn to work, and looked just as fresh as when she’d walked in the door this morning.

“What happened to you?” she asked.

Apparently I didn’t look so fresh.

I said, “I didn’t think it showed.”

Her eyes tightened. “You got a little limp going there.”

“Come on, baby. I’m never limp around you.”

All that got was a smirk.

She said, “Spill.”

I spilled. Midway through the story, a waitress who knew me well enough to deliver a Canadian Club and ginger without asking did so. Velda showed nothing in her expression, not even concern. Well, she did wince when I reported that thrusting knee that tried to be my valentine.

She had a Manhattan going, which she sipped as I reported, and when I’d wrapped up, she said, “You can’t be sure Casey’s file was on that disk.”

“Reasonable assumption,” I said with a shrug. “It was a backup, probably, squirreled away for Chris to find when that framed photo came his way. Casey went to some trouble, sealing it up. Looked like it came straight from the framer’s.”

“You didn’t see the guy who jumped you.”

I shook my head, sipped the CC & ginger. “No. Just enough light from the window to make out the shape. Good size guy. My size. He took Chris down with some martial arts moves, which is no surprise, since this is clearly our Knees Up Mother Brown murderer.”

The gag seemed appropriate in a pub.

Her eyes remained tight. “You didn’t get any sense of the attacker, beyond being a male, and your size?”

“I got a whiff of his aftershave, his cologne, whatever. ‘Obsession.’”

Her eyes opened a little. “Unless you were just smelling yourself.”

Velda had got me a little bottle of the stuff for my birthday — she thought the name was funny, considering my personality, plus she’d read in the Times that forest rangers in central India used the fragrance to lure a man-killing tiger out of the jungle, thanks to a certain pheromone used as an ingredient.

“I didn’t know,” she said, amused but her expression thoughtful, “that you’d started using it yet.”

“I haven’t,” I said. “Not after you told me the secret ingredient was scraped from glands near a civet’s anus.”

She chuckled, but got serious again. “And your attacker tonight was wearing the stuff?”

“Yeah, unless he’d been giving a civet a rim job.”

She almost did a spit take with the Manhattan.

But she managed to ask, “I don’t suppose you know anybody who uses that cologne.”

“Actually, doll, I do know of one.”

“Well?”

“Our client’s son.”

“Vincent Colby?”

“Vincent Colby.”

“Who,” she said, “is about your size and is proficient, his sensei says, in martial arts. For a beginner, anyway.”

“Roger that. Speaking of which, find out anything about the late, unlamented Roger Kraft?”

She nodded. “He had another profession, besides getaway car driver. He was a stuntman, working a lot of the films and TV shows shot in the city.”

“He had the build for it,” I said.

Velda glanced past me toward the front of the place, then patted the air with a palm. “Lily is just coming in the door. Be nice.”

“Who’s Lily? And I’m always nice.”

Velda gave me a look. “Lily is the other call girl who worked out of that suite with Jasmine Jordan. She agreed to meet with you. Here’s a picture of Jasmine Jordan, by the way. It tells a story.”

Velda slid a color 5” by 7” studio photo across to me. It told a story, all right — a full-figure shot of a handsome, voluptuous woman with a milk chocolate complexion that seemed light against a dark chocolate leather catsuit and very high-heeled black shoes. In her right hand was a riding crop.

I tucked it away.

Velda had gone to intercept the young woman, and they stopped at the bar to get the newcomer a drink. She was tall and appeared to be slender, but was wrapped up in a tan hooded raincoat with only a little showing of what seemed to be a lot of long, permed platinum hair. Only nylons and glittery red shoes showed, like she’d just arrived back from the Land of Oz. She had entered from a dark night that was getting wet enough to justify the raincoat, but her big-lensed, white-framed sunglasses were less explainable, unless she was a movie star. If so, I didn’t recognize her.

And if anonymity was what she was seeking — Lily, Velda had said her name was — it wasn’t working. Everybody in the bar, which was half-full (as optimists like me would say) was looking at her. New Yorkers who won’t give you a glance on the street were happy to stare indoors.

But then Lily and Velda tucked themselves in across from me in the booth and the pretty if somewhat hard young hooker was forgotten.

“This is my boss,” Velda said, “Mike Hammer. You may have heard of him.”

“Sorry, no,” she said, in a little girl voice — the kind of Judy Holliday pipes that probably got some of her clients off. She tugged back the hood and revealed my prediction about a mass of curly permed white-blonde hair had been correct.

“Call me Mike,” I said.

“Call me Lily,” she said, with the tiniest smile.

“Thanks for talking to us, Lily. You were Jasmine’s roommate?”

“We lived together,” she said, with a nod. “I knew Ronnie since high school. That was her real name — or anyway Veronica was. Like the Ronettes? She was a couple years older than me. We both had bad family scenes and caught a bus together and got the hell out. We were a couple of runaways who got lucky.”

“How so?”

Do I have to say that two girls who fell into a life of prostitution hardly qualified as “lucky”?

She frowned above the big sunglasses and asked, “You don’t need the whole story, do you?”

“Just enough to get my feet under me, honey.”

“Okay.”

She sipped her drink, a Bloody Mary, and folded her hands; her nails were painted red, like Velda’s, their sole similarity beyond being lookers.

“Well,” she began, “a pimp approached us at the bus station and he took to both of us, right away. Thought we had potential. He trained us. For Ronnie, the S & M scene made a sweet setup — she didn’t even have to do the guys. Just punish them till they came. She worked out of various apartments over the past six or seven years.”

“How old are you, Lily?”

“Twenty-seven.”

She was good-looking, but you’d say thirty-seven.

“Ronnie had it better than me, because she worked at home,” she continued. “Working at home is really great. I went to the clients, hotels mostly. My specialty was costumes. I dressed up like little girls. You know, schoolgirls. Catholic girls are really popular.”

“I bet they are.”

“I have a Little Bo Peep costume one regular really likes. Most of these clients just pleasure themselves. I hardly ever do the deed. And if I do, it costs them.”

“Jasmine... Ronnie... never ‘did the deed’?”

“No. She hated men. That’s what was so cool about her being in that profession. No sex, and she mostly was the dominatrix.”

Velda asked, “Never the submissive?”

“Much less often. But even then, it was bondage, discipline, not sex. Sometimes it got out of hand, though. She had one client... well, everybody has a client like that.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Who pays extra for you to go... too far.”

“Tell me about this client.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know much. Don’t know his name. But I do know he was rough. A real sadist. But the money was good, and he never went... too too far.”

“And this bus-station pimp still gets his cut?”

She flashed a smile; her teeth were nice, on the small side. “No, that’s part of what made us so lucky. He got killed. Some other pimp slit his throat.”

He got his cut, after all.

She was saying, “Which is sad in a way, because he was good to us, way better than most. We’ve been freelance ever since. Solo venders, no organized ring, no pimp. We have arrangements with taxicab drivers, hotels, law firms, businesses, the M and B game.”

Manufacturers and buyers.

“Our clients wear Brooks Brothers,” she said. “I never walked a street in my life, Mike. Neither did Jasmine.”

Maybe she was lucky. But Jasmine hadn’t been.

I asked, “Did one of those Brooks Brothers types kill Jasmine, d’you think, Lily?”

Her forehead furrowed. “Almost has to have. She wouldn’t let a stranger in. A cop with ID, maybe. It would be clients, mostly regulars. Sometimes referrals from those places I mentioned.”

“Businesses. Was one of them Colby, Daltree & Levine?”

“No. Is that a law firm?”

“Brokerage. Was Vincent Colby a regular?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know who that is. I stayed out of Ronnie’s business. She stayed out of mine. She was discreet. But I’ll tell you one suspicious thing.”

“Please.”

“She did keep a book, strictly for herself. A notebook, meticulous — neat rows of names, places, figures.”

“For blackmail purposes?”

“No! She wasn’t that kind of girl. It was to protect herself. She called it a life insurance policy.”

Hadn’t really paid off, had it?

“You need to understand the setup, Mike. We had the whole floor. We lived in one half, Jasmine did business in the other. I never brought anybody home.”

“This notebook...”

“Gone. Somebody took it. Might be the cops, but I’d guess whoever did this terrible thing to her is who has it now.” She sat forward, the big dark lenses staring at me. “Mike — Velda says you’re a detective. That you’re looking for whoever did this.”

“I am. Jasmine isn’t the killer’s only victim — we know of two others, who died the same way. And it’s possible another two were disposed of otherwise.”

Her mouth tightened. “Disposed of.”

“Sorry. That was a cold way to put it. You girls had been friends for a long time.”

“We weren’t friends, Mike.”

“You weren’t?”

She took the glasses off. The flesh around her eyes was swollen, puffy, and red; redder still were what had been the whites of her eyes. Lily had been crying. Lily had been crying her heart out.

“I loved Ronnie,” she said. “And she loved me.”

She began to sob and Velda put an arm around her, and gave me a tortured look. Lily had no tears left, but the crying? That may have only just started.

Finally it eased up, and she gave us her phone number, saying she’d do anything to help that she could. If we wanted a look at Jasmine’s “dungeon,” and their living quarters, she’d accommodate us, if we liked. I said we might take her up on that.

She asked, “Can you find the one who did this?”

“Count on it.”

“I don’t mean to insult you, Mike, but... you look like a man who could kill somebody if you felt like it.”

Velda seemed amused by the hooker’s good judge of character.

I said, “Are you sure you’ve never heard of me?”

Her little smile seemed almost embarrassed. “I remembered while we were talking. You killed that Penta character. It was on the news.”

“I did.”

The ravaged eyes bore in on me. “Will you kill Ronnie’s killer, Mike?”

“I promised a friend I wouldn’t.”

“That’s too bad. That’s a shame.”

“But this friend is a cop who will see that the killer goes away for a long, long time.”

“That’s something, anyway.”

She put on the sunglasses and slipped out of the booth. Velda scooted out too, to give her a hug.

When Velda returned, she said, “That special client of Ronnie’s... who liked to get rough. What’s that tell you?”

“Well, two things come to mind. Vincent Colby frequents the Dungeon Room at the Tube.”

“That’s one.”

“And those black eyes that Sheila Ryan habitually gets? We may have been reading that wrong. What if it’s our client’s son who’s been battering that babe?”

“Our client’s son who wears Obsession?” She half-smiled, shook her head. “The one who knows some martial arts? Maybe after the hit-and-run outside Pete’s Chophouse, the dark side of Vincent Colby came out to play.”

I was nodding. “The bunkai knee-kick kills didn’t start in till he’d had the concussion.”

I got out of the booth, threw some bills down to cover the damage. Said, “You go home, doll. This long night isn’t over yet.”

Her hand found mine. “You must be dead on your feet, lover. Come home with me. Let’s get some rest and start back in on this tomorrow.”

I shook my head. “Our killer isn’t taking any time off. I don’t like the way the players in our little cast keep thinning. It’s only eleven. Like the song says, I’ll knock on your door around midnight.”

“Around midnight,” she said, not arguing.

The mist kept promising rain while the sky’s occasional rumble made a threat out of it. Only the glowing signs of chain retailers (B. Dalton) and fast-food (Nathan’s) burned through the haze to break the spell of the old Bohemian Village that lingered on tree-lined streets where the buildings were too low-slung to create a skyline. The wet night would not dissuade the dealers and muggers from frequenting Washington Square Park, though the former had the decency to set up shop on benches, while the latter clung to the darkness, the cops a no-show in an area mostly left to its own devices.

Yet the Village remained a state of mind, where rebels and outsiders, artists and scribblers, hustlers and dreamers, converged on disorganized streets that turned the grid of Manhattan into a game of pick-up sticks. You could still play chess here, catch a foreign film, groove to jazz, eat midnight pizza, and get hopelessly lost.

I was neither tourist nor newcomer to a part of town that said, “Go screw yourself,” and, “Welcome,” all at once. And knowing the growls and looks and downright refusals from cabbies who hated Village fares because of those goddamn streets down there, I drove myself — my black Ford always spooked residents into thinking it was an unmarked car, which only amused me.

The apartment I was looking for was on Morton Street, in a brick mid-block five-story with a fire escape riding its face. The trees along here were skimpy with autumn making way for winter, and parking on the street was scarce, but I found a spot two blocks down from my destination.

When I’d used the phone at the pub, I got the Ryan girl’s friend, who she was staying with, who said Sheila was out but expected back shortly. The friend said I could come around, her voice chirpy and sociable and vaguely familiar. It still seemed that way, when she buzzed me up.

On the third floor, at number 302, I saw why: the blonde in her early twenties who answered the door — with her hair all permed and teased, as if Marilyn Monroe’s hair had exploded but in a good way — was the Red Riding Hood receptionist/secretary from Colby, Daltree & Levine.

She wasn’t wearing the big-lensed glasses tonight, but the eyes themselves were plenty big, their deep blue emphasized by a lot of darker blue eye shadow. She wore a form-fitting black dress with a pattern that it took me a while to discern was little gray screwdrivers, pointing up and pointing down alternately.

“Mr. Hammer,” she said, the words emerging from a mouth so dark-red lipsticked it was damn near black, “you’re lucky you caught me! I just got back from a date and I’d have been in bed.”

That seemed a little ambiguous, but I didn’t ask for an explanation. Was she on something? Maybe a little tipsy?

Hat in hand, I asked, “Is Ms. Ryan back?”

“No, but it shouldn’t be too long. Come in, come in!”

I did, entering into a small living room with funky second-hand 1950s atomic furniture and a kitchenette where the dishes of a working week awaited attention. The wood floor had a central throw rug — black with colorful geometric shapes — and riding the pastel walls were a framed Andy Warhol print of Debbie Harry and original abstract paintings probably bought on a nearby street.

She deposited me on a comfy overstuffed Naugahyde two-seater sofa, then gestured to the kitchenette. “Can I get you a wine cooler or a light beer or anything?”

“No, I’m fine. Sorry to impose.”

Her voice had a musical lilt. “Sheila should be along soon. Do you mind if I get out of these things?”

Was that a trick question?

“Not at all,” I said.

A nearby amoeba-shaped coffee table, with boomerang designs, was scattered with Cosmo, Vogue and the New Yorker, from under which Playgirl cover boy Geraldo Rivera peeked. He was smiling at me, as if suppressing a wink. The second-hand store Leave It to Beaver-era furnishings struck me as a cheap way to put together a hip decor.

She came back with the make-up washed off, wrapped up in a belted white silk dressing gown that stopped at the knee. Without the war paint, she looked about sixteen. She plopped down next to me, sitting with her legs tucked under her and her arm along the sofa’s upper edge.

“I know who you are,” she said.

“Yeah, I’m the guy who came around Colby’s a couple of times lately.”

“No. I mean I know who you are.”

I shrugged. “That makes two of us.”

She frowned a little. “You mean you know who I am?”

Who’s on first?

“Not really,” I said. “But I know who I am. I’m Mike.”

“I’m Julie Olsen.”

“Pleased to meet you, Julie.”

With the vaudeville routine out of the way, she moved on. “Sheila told me some things about you. Said you’re famous, in a way.”

“In a way.”

Her chin came up and so did the corners of her mouth. “I told my daddy I’d met you — he called from Queens, where he and my mother are. He was impressed.”

“He must impress easily.”

She shook her head and all that blonde hair came along for the ride. “Not really. Sheila went back for a few more of her things.”

I didn’t follow that and my expression must have said so.

She explained: “Back to Gino’s apartment, for more clothes and personal effects and stuff. Now that she’s moved back in here. We were roomies before she moved in with Gino.”

“Ah.”

She frowned. Maybe for the first time, judging by that smooth face. “Did you know he used to abuse her? I mean, really abuse her, slap her around, smack her and stuff, with his fist sometimes.”

“She’s going with Vincent Colby now.”

“She is. He’s nice.”

“He doesn’t abuse her?”

“Oh no.”

“I heard he likes it rough.”

She blinked at me. “Likes what rough?”

“Sex. Or sex play, anyway.”

Shrug. “I wouldn’t know. He’s her boyfriend.”

I shifted on the sofa. “Julie, there was another girl in the secretarial pool at Colby...”

“I’m not in the pool. I have my own desk. You saw it.”

“I did. You and Ms. Stern seem to have floated to the top.”

“Top of what?”

“The secretarial pool.”

She thought about that, then smiled. “You’re kind of funny, aren’t you?”

“Some people think I’m hilarious.”

“Mark me one of ’em. You mean Vickie Dorn.”

“Victoria Dorn, yeah. She was killed a while back.”

She drew in breath through her nose, let it out the same way. “That was awful. Strangled or something. And raped. Raped first, I suppose.”

“Right. Didn’t Vincent date her?”

She shrugged and shook her head simultaneously. “He went out with her a few times. I don’t think it got serious. They weren’t a... thing. Not that I know of, anyway.”

“Were you friends with Vickie?”

“Work friends.”

“Did she say anything about Vincent?”

The big blue eyes got narrow. “You mean, like... did he like it rough?”

“Right. Like did he like it rough?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t know Vickie that well. But if Vincent likes it rough, wouldn’t I know? From Sheila? We are friends, not just work friends.”

I gestured around us. “Friends before you got this place together?”

“Work friends till then. Better friends now.”

I frowned. “I didn’t know Sheila ever worked at Colby’s.”

“She didn’t. We used to waitress together at Café Reggio’s. When I got the job at Colby’s, we could afford this place. She’d stop by there sometimes and that’s when Vincent saw her and, you know, liked what he saw.”

“Kind of pursued her, you mean.”

“No. He was just friendly. Flirted some, but... you need to talk to Sheila about that.”

“Got it.”

“I didn’t mean to get snippy.”

“You didn’t get snippy at all, Julie. I’m just a snoop. It’s what they pay me for.”

Her smile was cuter than a box of puppies. “Yeah. You’re a detective. Like Magnum. You sure you don’t want a beer or a wine cooler?”

“No, I’m fine.” I patted her arm. “Listen, honey... sorry about all the questions. And you don’t have to keep me company or anything. You don’t have to entertain me.”

Another shrug. “I don’t mind.”

I glanced toward the door. “I thought Sheila was going to be here soon.”

“Could take her a while. Do you know what daddy issues are?”

I gestured to the coffee table. “Field and Stream?”

Her gaze got pointed. “It means I have a thing for older guys. Not just any guys. Just certain ones. A certain... type.”

She wiggled her eyebrows at me.

I said, “Uh, look, Julie... I’m old enough to be your father.”

“But you aren’t my father. Did I mention he was a policeman?”

This was every kind of wrong all at once.

I shifted on the couch again. “If you want to hump your old man, baby, don’t tell me about it. Find yourself a shrink. Maybe find one under forty.”

That made her laugh a little. She stood. She shrugged as she tugged at the silk belt and that’s all it took for that dressing gown to slide down her smooth skin and puddle at her feet.

Her flesh was a creamy pale pink thing she wore with pride, her breasts neither small nor large but perfect, nipples erect within their puffy, darker pink settings, her waist tapering narrow then sweeping back out into full hips. She did a slow pirouette for me, proud of the rest of her flesh, too, the graceful back, the dimpled, rounded behind, which itself was an architectural marvel of uplift.

What was my secretary’s name again?

Then she sat in Daddy’s lap, where she was able to confirm her effect on me, and her arms went around my neck and then her mouth was on mine, warm and moist...

“Ten years ago,” I whispered into the sweet, naughty face, “what a wild time we’d have had. But, darling child, I have a woman at home.” Named Velda. “And you need to be more careful about who you share your riches with.”

“I have rubbers,” she said.

The bluntness of that wilted the moment, among other things, and I lifted the kid by the narrow waist and set her down next to me.

“Put your robe on,” I said crankily.

She looked embarrassed now, as if Daddy had scolded her, and she scooped the silk thing off the floor and went padding into the bathroom in the nearby hall, fanny jiggling. Somebody needed to paddle that kid.

But not me.

I was chuckling to myself, shaking my head, when the front door opened, and my first reaction was to think of what Sheila Ryan might have walked into.

But maybe she wouldn’t even have noticed an old man banging a young girl, because Sheila Ryan was crying, hysterical as hell, screaming, “Gino! Gino!”

I went over to her and took her gently by the forearms. “He’s not here.”

Her eyes were wide and wet. “I know he’s not here!.. What are you doing here, Mr. Hammer?”

Then she shook her head and pushed me away, saying, “What does it matter! He’s dead! Gino is dead!”