The Best That Ever Did It

The Best That Ever Did It

Ed Lacy

This page formatted 2004 Blackmask Online.

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PREFACECHAPTER 1CHAPTER 2CHAPTER 3CHAPTER 4CHAPTER 5CHAPTER 6CHAPTER 7

PREFACE

IT WAS just another ordinary and dreary bar on Amsterdam Avenue in that part of New York City called Washington Heights. Why it was named The Grand Cafe nobody seems to know. It had neither gaudy neon lights nor air conditioning, and the small screen TV perched in one corner was the same set it had had when TV was a novelty.

It was like an old-fashioned saloon, although it only dated back to 1923. (During Prohibition it was called the Grand Cafe Ice Cream Parlour and openly sold needle beer and very little ice cream.) It was called a bar, rarely a cafe, a joint, a gin-mill, a dive, and a dump. Strangely enough nobody ever called the place what it really was... home.

Certainly not the best of homes, but after a long day at a dull job a man could skip returning to his lonely dingy room and drop into the Grand—which became his living room—for a beer and see the regulars nod at him, hear Jimmy-the bartender-mutter “Hello...” which may have been the only friendly word the man heard all day.

A man could escape—temporarily—the bitterness of tenement poverty that drained his wife's youth and made his children merely pests... by dropping into the bar, which became his den, and watching the ball game or the fights on TV, join in the brassy and meaningless small talk.

In the afternoons a few housewives would come in for a fast beer, to gossip and find out what number was leading. Or just to get a snack, for any time during the day or night you could get a thick hamburger, and it was assumed you wanted a heavy slice of onion and a pickle on it.

In short: in the Grand Cafe a human could still find a small measure of warmth and dignity in the company of other humans.

On this particular evening, when the men were murdered, the bar was crowded and full of cheer because Lady Luck had gently tickled one of the regulars. His name was Franklin (“But call me Frank") Andersun and he was a thin young man in his late twenties with the kind of face women didn't look at twice, or even once. As befitting the night's celebrity, Andersun was standing at the center of the bar and the others were buying him beers—and he had been trying to make the men's room for the last half hour.

“Tell me, Frankie boy,” a newcomer said, shaking his hand and anchoring him to the bar, “how did you work it? I'm reading the paper in the subway and I see your name. Gave me a bang. They really give you a thousand bucks for writing them few words? What was they again?”

“'I eat Nutsy Pudding because I know what I like and I like Nutsy,'“ an elderly man repeated, shaking his large head as he talked. “What a way to make a thousand!”

Jimmy the bartender was short and fat, with liver spots on his hands and freckles on his wrinkled face, and all his skin had a preserved, wax-like look to it. Pouring a beer he said, “And that's the trouble with the world, everybody thinks something is easy, after they see it done.”

“It was easy, it was the truth,” Andersun said. “I'm a fussy eater but I go for that pudding. Eat it like a pig.”

“And you're heading for Europe?” the newcomer asked.

“Yeah. But I got to go to the John now or my kidneys will float out of my mouth,” Frank said, finally breaking away from the men around him.

“Jimmy, what's he want to go to Europe for?” the newcomer asked the barkeep.

“He just wants to, I guess.”

At the end of the bar nearest the door a place was reserved by custom for Danny Macci, whose tremendous shoulders made him look short, although he was well over six feet tall. He had bushy strong hair that was all gray, an ugly face, and a large square chin. Danny had been a professional wrestler back in a TV-less era when wrestling wasn't such a busy profession, and along with a pair of ears thickened like stuffed prunes, Macci had also contracted an eye disease that left him blind. He lived on a monthly relief check and had little trouble cadging beers from the regulars, and even from Jimmy. At the drop of a beer cap Danny would lecture about “Them lousy clowns they call wrestlers today,” or show off his muscles. Now he put down his glass of beer, asked, “Why shouldn't the lad go to Europe? Be nice to hear strange sights and people. Wish I was going.”

“Had your eyes, you'd be wrestling all over the world today,” Jimmy said.

“That's the truth. I'm near sixty but I'm still a wrestler, not an acrobat. Still got my strength.” He held up a thick, gnarled hand. “Anybody want to see me crush a beer can?”

“Now, Danny, ain't necessary to do that,” Jimmy said. “You got two beers coming up.”

Another regular said, “If I was a young man like Frank, I'd open a store with the money.”

“Does surprise me,” Jimmy said, moving down the bar with three beers (except for strangers, beer was the week-night drink, with a whiskey or two thrown in on Saturday nights), “because Frank used to talk so much about the money to be made if a fellow got a start.”

“What's a grand for a business?” somebody chimed in. “Start on a shoestring and you end up hanging yourself with it.”

Andersun returned to the bar and thanked another newcomer who had a beer ready for him. The newcomer asked, “Wasn't you in Europe when you were a pilot?”

“I was a waist gunner, not a pilot,” Frank told him. “We got to England just when the war was over in Germany and we flew our B-17's back to the States, started training for the Pacific. Never got there either. In flying, you're always looking down at things. Now I want to see what's going on down there.”

“Quitting your job?”

Frank nodded. “Sure. I'll be a stock clerk someplace else after I see what makes Paris tick.” He finished his beer. “Near eleven. Guess I'll float on home. See you, Jimmy.”

“When you leaving?”

“Not for several weeks. Haven't seen about my passport or boat tickets yet. They only told me I won last night.”

“And the reporters came right up to see you,” Danny added.

“Not a reporter, the company's public-relations man phoned. He planted the story. See you tomorrow.”

As Andersun left, the regular who wanted to open a business said, “Soldier is always a soldier, hey, Jimmy? Remember the way we spent our bonus money back in... When was that, '29, '32, '34, or when?”

“I forget the year but it was the only time I was loaded,” Jimmy said. “Tell you, soldiers in the second war are different, more serious, like Frank. They were in longer, saw more action.”

“But they never faced no gas like we did. I remember the time...”

“Soldiers, soldiers, big bullying heroes!” Danny cut in loudly. In 1917 he only had partial sight and was rejected.

“That's no way to talk.”

Danny turned to face the man. “I talk any damn way I want —unless you think you can stop me!”

Even when he was staggering drunk no one ever tangled with Danny, and it wasn't because he was blind—those thick arms could squeeze a man to death.

“Danny, take it slow,” Jimmy said softly. “And finish your beer.”

The bar quieted down. A woman put a nickel in the ancient juke box and there was the usual small talk. Outside, two brief, sharp clear sounds were made and Danny looked up from his beer, said, “Hear that? They were shots.”

“Aw Danny, slow down. A car backfiring,” Jimmy said.

“That's right, we heard enough shots in the woods at Verdun to recognize guns, didn't we, Jimmy? I'll never forget...”

A young man came rushing into the bar, full of breathless self-importance at the news he carried. He yelled, “Two guys was shot dead outside! One of them is Frank Andersun!”

Some twenty feet from the corner, where the light from Amsterdam Avenue started to fade into the dimness of the block, a crowd made a rough circle around the bodies. A radio car was parked in the middle of the street and a cop kept growling, “Stand back. Come on, stand back.”

Franklin Andersun was lying on his side—and what was left of his face—arms and legs flung out at grotesque angles. Further down the block, next to an automobile, was the body of a man about the same age as Andersun but better dressed. He had been shot cleanly in the back and except for his open glassy eyes, lay on the sidewalk as though he was sleeping.

The crowd, growing every second, was quiet—even people leaning out of the surrounding apartment house windows were still. It had taken Danny longer to reach the scene than the others and now he tapped his dirty white cane as he said, “Killed? Told you big soldier heroes they were shots!” There was a high note of almost savage triumph in his ragged voice.

One of the cops said, “Shut up.”

“Make me! I'll...!” The words were cut off as Jimmy covered Danny's mouth, whispered, “Cops.”

Radio and squad cars converged on the circle of people and a score of detectives went to work. Suddenly one of the detectives bending over the second body called out, “This one, he's got a badge on him!”

The crowd stared at the man shot in the back and an uneasy murmur swelled and burst when somebody shrilled, “Jeez, a cop was knocked off!”

There was surprise, alarm, and a slight trace of enjoyment in the voice, and in the general murmur of the crowd. Then everybody began to talk in whispers.

CHAPTER 1

SOME JERK kept driving his fancy Italian-made sport roadster after a piston ring broke, and of course the motor overheated and got on fire. I was rewiring it, and these low underslung jobs are tough for a guy my size. But it was an interesting car, everything designed for speed, including the high compression cylinders, so narrow I couldn't get my hand into them. As I was wondering why a person would spend so much dough to import a sweet job like this and then not take care of it, Joe—the garage manager—yelled out from the phone booth, “Barney— for you.”

It was Cy O'Hara, the real-estate man who shared my midget office. Cy said, “There's a Mrs. Turner to see you. How soon will you be back, Mr. Harris?” Naturally the “Mr.” was for the client's benefit.

“I'm busy on this job. I don't know any Mrs. Turner. She say an insurance company sent her? Does she look like money —or is she selling something?”

Cy said, “Why no, Mr. Harris, the insurance company didn't call. As to the other matter you asked me to look into—a rather attractive piece of property and I think the finances are sound. Oh, what about Mrs. Turner?”

“Okay, you corny double-talker. Thanks for calling me. I'll be up in ten minutes,” I told Cy, hanging up.

As I was taking off my coveralls, Joe came over and asked, “Got a case, Barney?” He was a big brown heavy-set man bigger than me, with a busted nose: he once tried to be a heavyweight boxer. He also had bad teeth that didn't show up against the deep brown of his face. “Another stolen car?”

“Don't know yet. Any rush on this foreign heap, Joe?”

“Naw. How's it coming?”

“Tricky job, but neat. Need another four or five hours on it,” I said.

When I entered the office, Cy went through the sudden-appointment routine, gave me a number where he could be reached—which was the coffeepot downstairs. We had a rule that whenever one of us was busy, the other would take a walk. If we were both busy at the same time, that would be quite a problem, but business had never been that good.

I sat down at my desk and the woman sitting opposite me was about twenty-three, twenty-four, very correctly and expensively dressed in black. She was solidly built, the kind of strong figure the street-corner whistlers call “Built up from the ground.” She either had good breasts or a smart bra, and when you got to the face—it didn't belong to either the figure or the clothes; it was a teen-ager's face, very solemn and big-eyed, her dark hair even-cut in bangs. If she wasn't pretty, she was a bit on the cute side.

She asked, “Are you Barney Harris, the private detective?” Her voice was a nervous squeak and I enjoyed that “the private detective.”

I nodded at my license hanging on the wall. “That says I'm a private detective.”

“I'm Mrs. Betsy Turner.”

The “Betsy” went with the schoolgirl face and thin voice. I made one of my deductions—she wanted her playboy husband tailed. As usual, as a private eye, I was still a good mechanic, for she said, “My husband is Edward Turner, the detective who was killed in the double shooting up on Amsterdam Avenue ten days ago. You've been recommended to me. What are your rates, Mr. Harris?”

“Thirty dollars a day, plus expenses.”

“I'd like to hire you.”

“To do what?” I asked politely, trying to comb my wild hair with my left hand.

“To find my husband's killer.”

If my mouth wasn't open, it should have been, I was that astonished. “You want to hire me...? Mrs. Turner, I read about the murders, but... a cop has been killed. The police will find the killer.”

“The police department isn't acting fast enough for me.” Her voice was so frail, almost helpless, it was interesting.

“Mrs. Turner, when one of their own is killed, the police pull out all the stops—they have to for self-protection. Also, despite the 'private eyes' you've seen on TV and in the movies, I've never had a criminal case in my life, never slugged anybody since I was ten, never carried a gun. I don't even do guard work. Mostly cars, skip-tracing, and following two-timing husbands and wives around. What I'm trying to tell you is: I'm just me, and the police are a thousand men with an army of stoolies and equipment. What makes you think I could move faster than they can?”

“You can help.”

I tried to keep my laugh down in my belly. “I'd probably be a stumbling block. My advice is let the police...”

“Lieutenant Swan, who was Ed's boss, recommended you.”

I sighed—that explained everything. “Mrs. Turner, that... eh... clown is some kind of brother-in-law of mine. Let the police do the job; they can do it much better than any private investigator, believe me.”

Those big eyes studied me for a long moment, ran over my bulky body, my cheap suit and worn shirt. Then she said, “I'm impressed with your honesty and frankness, Mr. Harris. I'll hire you.”

“It's a waste of money to...”

“Are you working for me?”

“A murder case can run into a lot of days and...”

“Mr. Harris, I want to hire you.” A note of firmness crept into her voice.

“Okay, long as you know what you're buying.” I'd made my pitch and I certainly could use the money. “Only I'm telling you in front, I don't go in for shootings, or any rough stuff, all that movie slop.”

“Mr. Harris, this isn't a movie—it's very real to me. I have a special something I want you to look into, something the police refuse to pay any attention to.”

“Like what?” A job like this had to last at least ten days— three hundred bucks would knock off a lot of bills.

“Like—suicide,” she said in a whisper, her eyes on the verge of tears.

I must have registered astonishment for the second time. “Something was troubling your husband?” I asked like a real moron.

“I don't know. Edward and I were happy, very much in love,” she said quickly. “Ed was courageous and brave. He was cited twice by the department. He was an... well, an aggressive man. Certainly a man like that isn't shot in the back without—they say he never even went for his gun.”

“Maybe he never had a chance to get it out?”

“No, they say this other man, this Frank Andersun, was shot first, so Ed must have had a few seconds to get his gun. But somehow, I feel Ed didn't want to fight back, that he wanted to die. That's the only explanation for his being shot in the back. And that's why it's so important for me to learn if he was a suicide, and the only way to do that is to find the person who killed him.”

“As his wife, you'd certainly know any reason he had for killing himself, so...”

“I don't know of any reason. I suspect suicide because Ed wasn't the type to be caught with his gun bolstered.” Her voice was almost curt.

“The police, what do they think of the suicide theory?”

“They don't think anything of it. That's why I'm hiring you.”

I shook my head. “I don't know if I can deliver. All I can promise is to give it a try. Murder is over my head.”

“That's all I expect, an honest effort.” She stood up, taking a checkbook out of a dainty black leather bag. “I'll give you a retainer of $200.” She bent over the desk to write and I had a whiff of her perfume; it may not have been exactly subtle, but she smelled fine. “I live on Riverside Drive, and my address is on the check. I'll expect you at my apartment every night at eight.”

“At your apartment? Every night? Why?”

“To report what you have found out during the day. It will be more convenient than my coming here.”

“Want to be sure you get your money's worth every day.”

“Yes, I do,” she said quietly. “Anything wrong with that?”

“Mrs. Turner, I don't work from nine to five. I may be busy on the case in the evening. Also, as you probably know from your husband, detective work is mostly waiting around, plodding through a million blind alleys till you stumble—and I mean stumble—upon a lead, a stray clue, that untangles the whole puzzle. Why, I may work for days without coming up with a thing.”

“Long as you're working, that's all I ask. It isn't that I don't trust you, Mr. Harris, I can't stand the waiting. I want to feel that something—anything—is being done.”

“Suppose I report whenever I've some news?”

“I'm sorry, but for my own peace of mind, it must be every night, starting this evening. Is that understood?”

“It's your money.”

“I know. I'll see you at eight, tonight. Good day, Mr. Harris.” I stood up and she wasn't as short as she seemed—I'm six four and she came up to my shoulders. I walked her to the door, then lit a cigarette and came back to my desk, stared at the check. It was ten minutes to two, plenty of time to make the bank. I looked through the second mail—two ads and a phone bill. No answer from a character who had moved—with a TV set he still owed nine installments on. I looked up his last known address and phone number—he'd been sharing a room with another guy who was very close-mouthed. Locking my phone and desk, I went downstairs and into the coffeepot on the corner. Cy was plying his hobby, trying to make time with Alma the waitress. I told him, “Leaving for the day now. Be able to give you the rent tomorrow.”

“Any calls for me?”

I shook my head and Cy made some corny crack to Alma and took off. The place was empty, except for the cook. I laid a dollar on the counter, asked Alma, “Want to make one of those calls for me?”

“Easiest bucks I've ever made,” she said, a smile cracking her hard face. I wrote the name and number on the back of an envelope, gave her the pencil and a dime. “Same old routine.”

“I know. How's your kid?”

“Swell.”

“When you going to invite me over to make supper for her? I love kids.”

“One of these days, soon,” I lied.

We went over to the wall phone and she dialed, asked in a sexy voice, “Bobby in? This is a friend of his. Had a date with him a couple weeks ago, but I got sick. Oh you, no cracks... all right... all right, you guessed it. Thought I might keep the date tonight. I sound like what? (She winked at me and sneered at the phone.) Sound pretty hot yourself. Sure, I wouldn't mind going out with you, but I got to ask Bobby-boy if it's okay first. What? Oh, met him at a dance hall. Now don't give me a line, honey. How do I know he'll say it's okay? I never two-time my boy friends. A new Ford? That's real gone, honey. Sure I'm free this Saturday, free the whole week end, but got to ask Bobby first. Wouldn't want me to pull that on you, would you? No, no, never mind my number, I have yours and I'm mad about new Fords. Tell you, after I keep my date with Bobby, I'll give you a ring. Not stringing you... don't know what I'd do for a new car. What? (A real giggle.) Fresh thing! Hanging up this minute unless you let me speak to Bobby. What—where did he move to? Honest?”

She wrote a Long Island address on the envelope, handed it to me. There was some more corny talk, then her dime was up and she hung up, said, “What a creep.”

I phoned the TV company, told them the new address, added, “Nope, send your own men or the cops. I don't do strong-arm work. Never mind that I'm-built-for-it chatter. Put a ten-dollar check in the mail, please.”

As I turned away from the phone, Alma grabbed my arm, said, “Make a muscle for me, Barney.”

“Some other time, honey, have to make the bank now. Thanks.”

I went over to the garage and got my car. It was a prewar Buick roadmaster and looked shot, but the motor was spotless with a supercharger of my own design, an adult hot rod that would carry me 110 miles an hour any time I wanted. In the summer I took the kid out to Bridgehampton to watch the auto races; sometimes I thought about entering them.

From the bank I drove up St. Nicholas Avenue and parked directly in front of the police precinct, which was built in 1889, according to the date on the cornerstone of the ugly building, and looked every minute of it. I asked the balding desk sergeant if Lieutenant Swan was in, and he nodded. Al's office was painted a bile green and had a minimum of furniture—an old desk and two chairs.

In sharp contrast to his office, Al looked modern and sharp. He was built like a strong middleweight and wore a girdle to keep his stomach flat. His clothes were the kind that said they were expensive, without shouting it, and Al took up a lot of time with his “grooming.” He was the lieutenant in charge of the precinct detective squad, and he moved carefully behind his desk, as if afraid he might soil his manicured hands. But there wasn't anything foppish about Al; his fat face had the sullen cast of a fighter and he could be a mean bastard. I got my wide bottom down into the other chair, said, “See you're doing me favors again.”

He put down the report he was reading, sat back in his chair —first adjusting the shoulder holster that looked clean and neat against his white-on-white shirt. Al slipped me a tight smile. “Hello, you big slob, expecting you.” He had a rasping croak for a voice, claimed he had once stopped a baseball with his Adam's apple when he was a young cop trying to break up a street game. He asked, “Want a drink of ginger beer?”

I hesitated, not sure I wanted a shot so early in the day, or at all. My brother-in-law wasn't a man of imagination and had one practical joke he played over and over—for some reason he got a bang out of spiking everything from milk to water. When you asked for water in his house you usually got straight gin. Maybe it had something to do with the fact he never touched the stuff, not even beer, himself. Although practical jokers ran in his family, Violet would always tell anyone going to the bathroom in our place, “Just mention my name and you'll get a good seat,” then get hysterical with laughter, no matter how many times she said it. Bathroom jokes were her specialty, including such corn as toilet paper with gags on it, but otherwise Violet was a most intelligent woman.

“Got sodas in tin cans now,” Al said, taking one from a small picnic cooler he kept under his desk. Tossing the can at me, he pointed to an opener on his cluttered desk. I casually glanced at the cap—it didn't seem to have been tampered with.

“How's Ruthie?”

“Fine.” I opened the ginger beer, took a cautious sip. It was half rum but I drank it without showing any reaction and Al looked disappointed. I thought of the time the jerk had put in —carefully opening the can, spiking it, then recapping it with the skill of a precision mechanic.

“When you bringing her out to the house? May and the boy always asking for her. Ought to see my rumpus room now— over a thousand feet of electric track and...”

“We'll be out one of these days. What did you send this Turner woman to me for?” I finished the drink, bent the bottle cap between my thumb and forefinger. Al tried hard not to watch, but could not take his eyes away. I threw the bent cap on his desk.

“She wanted a private dick. You're one, so ...”

“Stop it.”

Al picked up the cap gently, looked at it, tried to straighten it, then tossed it into the wastebasket. He grinned at me, showing his neat even teeth. “What's the beef, Barney, throwing away business?”

“You know I don't go in for crime stuff, but...”

“But you took the case?” Al cut in.

I nodded. “But I don't feel right about it.”

“Barney, stop knocking yourself out. This Turner broad is a little buggy about her husband's death. She's got his funeral money from the city, some insurance green, and was hell bent on hiring herself a private dick. Honest, I told her she was throwing the dough away, but she insisted—kept getting in our hair—so I figured you'd be the cheapest tin badge she could get. And might as well be you picking up the easy coin.”

“Easy?”

“Not a damn thing you can do on this case except stop looking like a bum. Why the hell can't you press that suit, comb your hair?”

“Forget my hair. Al, I'm going to give her an honest day's work every...”

Al waved a manicured hand—his right—the one with the broken knuckle. “Don't. Don't do a thing but sit back and wait for us to crack it. And keep her off our necks. The entire police force is running into stone walls all over this mess, so what can a private jerk do? That's what I kept telling her but she became a pest... and I knew you wouldn't rook her too much on the expense account. Also Mrs. Turner is a sweet-looking number and you need a wife to look after Ruthie— Who knows what will happen?”

I stared at him for a quick moment. Al had this habit of laughing at you with his eyes, mocking you, while the rest of his mug was deadpan. Vi did that too, one of the few things about her that used to annoy me. “Since when did you join the Cupid Union? Trade in your rod for a bow and arrow? Forget my love life. Mrs. Turner thinks it's suicide.”

Al laughed loudly—a tearing sandpaper sound. “She gave me a headache with that phonograph record. Look, Ed Turner wasn't the lad to knock himself off. While he was still a probationary cop, a rookie, he made a good pinch—a lucky one— nabbed some clown the Feds wanted. He was made a third-grade detective and after that—gangway for eager-beaver Ed. He was one of these rough young studs who hadn't learned to quiet down—a punk with a badge. Always using his hands instead of his head.”

“That include holding his mitts out for dough?”

Al nodded. “Off the record, yes, and clumsy at it too. Transferred once because of his itchy palms. I had to talk to him—get rough a couple of times, before he smartened up. Hell, a little cushion money—that's expected, but this fool tried jazzing the numbers syndicate.”

“Maybe they paid him off with lead?”

Al snorted. “Don't be corny. Told you I wised the boy up, told him not to cut in on the big brass's gravy. This case is a weirdie; not an angle makes sense. Got the slug from Andersun —and that's spelled s-u-n. Shot by a Luger .38. Turner's went through his body and we can't find it.”

“Suppose you searched the streets?”

“'Suppose you searched the streets?' ” Al mimicked me. “What the hell you think we did, played games on the block! Damn slug probably stuck in a tire, or some other part of a car, was driven away and lost. All we know is Turner had his car, an old Chevvy, parked and he must have stepped out of the car when he saw Andersun get it. Stopped one himself.”

“Without reaching for his gun?”

Al waved his hand. “Yes, and that doesn't add up either. Told you, Turner was one of these ambitious shoot-first lads.”

“What about Andersun—with a u?”

“Nothing. Local boy, stock clerk, absolutely no record. Just won a slogan contest that day, won himself a grand, celebrating at the bar. Going to take a trip to Europe—it was in all the papers—a publicity plant about his winning. Didn't have the money on him, hadn't even got the check yet. Anyway, this wasn't a robbery. Turner had over a hundred in his wallet. Andersun kid is clean, a hard-working slob, not even a lover boy. Lot of people heard the shots, but nobody saw a damn thing.”

I thought for a moment. “Who got second prize in this contest?”

“Barney, take it easy. A sixty-three-year-old grandmother who lives in some hick town in Michigan came in second— never left town in her life,” Al said wearily. “Any more questions, Mr. Holmes?”

I took a cigarette from his pack on the desk, lit it. “What was Turner doing there in his car?”

“Now you're getting warm. That can be the jackpot question. He wasn't on duty and that street isn't even in our precinct. His wife has no idea why he was there; people in the street think they have seen him around the block before, but they're not sure. No rackets working in that street, either. By the way, the precinct handling the case is the one below us, and a Lieutenant Franzino is in charge of the detective squad. Told him about you and he isn't too happy about having a private snooper around, but I said you'd stay out of his hair.”

“Got anything going yourself—off the record?”

Al smiled with his eyes again. “Got an idea but so far it stinks. But it's the only thing makes sense. Turner and the killer were knocking off Andersun—for some reason—then the killer crossed Turner. That would account for Ed not having his gun out.”

“What about this lucky pinch Turner made?”

“Barney, stop making like a detective. We've run through that—guy was a minor dope runner doing five to ten in Lewis-burg right now. No gang tie-up. Wasn't an important pinch, but we showed up the FBI, and downtown loves that.”

“Wife said he was cited twice?”

Al groaned. “Turner came upon a guy tear-assing out of an apartment house in the early hours of the morning. Said he told the guy to stop, then shot him dead. Seems the guy was merely beating up his gal, but fortunately for Turner they found a gun on the guy—although his gal swore he never had a gun in his life. Could be Ed was smart, in a stupid way; maybe carried an extra gun. Anything else, Mr. Bogart?”

“About your theory—why should Turner be in on killing Andersun?”

Al gave me a belly laugh, then cut it off abruptly. “If we knew that, you'd be out of a job. Look, besides men from both precincts, there's a batch of Homicide guys from downtown working on this, plus men from the detective district. Had a half a dozen men checking on Andersun and his family—drew a zero. The kid worked for a tool company, thirty-eight dollars and fourteen cents take-home pay, lived at home, had a girl friend he wasn't banging, and his big moment was having beers at the corner ginmill. Kid didn't even play cards, or the horses or the numbers.”

I stood up—the rum was making me sweat. “How about Turner being shot first and Andersun merely walking into it?”

Al shook his head. He was getting gray above the ears, or maybe he dyed it gray. “Tried that one for size too. Doc got there fast, is positive Andersun died first. And of course this has been through the labs and they come up with same answer.”

I said, “The one thing out of the ordinary in Andersun's life was his winning the dough, going to Europe.”

Al leaned back in his chair—he never stood up beside me. “That's a terrific deduction—they kill people for talking about taking a trip to Paris these days?”

“Well, I'll look around. Give the family a hello for me.”

“Sure, and bring Ruthie out. Barney, remember downtown is running this show—don't get in their way.”

I stopped at the door to ask, “Ed Turner—a lover?”

“Not as far as we know, too ambitious to get mixed up with dames. And with a wife stacked like his, what would be the point? When you come out to the house, like you to check my new Caddy.”

Guess my face showed things, for Al said, “Don't give me that look. I made some dough in the stock market, show you the brokers' statements that...”

“Who said you didn't make it? I'll keep you informed if I luck up on anything.”

“Well, now, thanks, Perry Mason. Don't trip over any bar bells.”

I couldn't think of a snappy comeback, so I went out. The rum made me hungry. I looked around for a hamburger joint, had a better idea. I drove down to the Grand Cafe, and the guy who named it had a sense of humor.

The bartender was a short, egg-shaped old guy, and there was a couple sipping beer in a booth and playing the juke box, and a blind man at the bar. The blind guy had the shoulders and ears of a wrestler. I ordered a hamburger and the barkeep grumbled about cooking so early in the day. The blind man turned his face toward me, said, “Big guy, ain't you?”

“Two hundred and forty-eight pounds.”

“Can sort of feel a guy's size. Can't I, Jimmy?” he asked the bartender. He had the cracked voice some men get when they start to grow old.

Jimmy muttered, “Yeah.”

I asked, “This the place where they had the two killings?”

“Not in here!” This, Jimmy growled at me. “Never had no trouble in here. Cop, ain'tcha?”

“Private.” I flashed my identification card.

“What they need a private goof on a case like this for?” the blind man wanted to know.

“I'm not just sticking my snoot in for kicks, somebody hired me,” I said as the bartender put a thick hamburger in front of me, asked, “Beer?”

I nodded. It was a hell of a good burger, old-fashioned one, and when I told Jimmy this, he just scowled, asked, “What did you expect, horse meat? Place may not look like much, but we give you honest value. And you're wasting your time, place has been full of all kinds of cops and dicks. Makes the customers nervous.”

“Only doing my job,” I said. The bartender kept on, scowling. Usually you can ease things by saying it's a job, or my duty, or my business—as if that meant a damn thing.

There was a lot of silence and the music of the juke box till the blind man asked, “Like to see me crush a can of beer with my hands?”

“Sure would.” I was getting no place fast.

Jimmy said, “Now, Danny, what you starting so early for?”

“You heard the man, he's buying me a can of foam,” Danny said. He quickly drank the beer, put the empty can in his left hand—which was big as a ham—and crushed it. That was a good stunt for a guy his age. I picked up the beer cap and bent it in half between my fingers, forgetting he couldn't see. I handed it to him and he felt it, asked excitedly, “Jimmy, you see him bend this with his fingers?”

“Aha.”

“Didn't press it against the bar or nothing?”

“No, Danny, just his fingers. A strong ox.”

Danny turned and ran his hands over me. “Weightlifter?”

“Not for the last year or so.”

“What kind of cop are you, no gun?”

I laughed; Danny was sharper than a man with eyes. “Guess I'm not a gunman.”

I made a big impression on Danny. We started talking about strong men and Jimmy joined in. They kept bulling about the old-timers: Sandow, Hackenschmidt, Goerner. They had never even heard of John Davis, or Doug Hepburn, Grimek, or Kono. Then Danny started on wrestlers and was breezing about Grotch, Poddoubny, the time he wrestled one of the Zbyszko brothers, and how he had almost pinned Strangler Lewis. Finally, I asked, “This Franklin Andersun, was he a muscleman?”

Danny laughed, filling the air with the smell of beer. “Couldn't lift a toothpick. Boys today got it too soft, cars to take them here and there, elevators and stuff. Everything is done for them, they don't develop no muscles.”

“What do you fellows think about the killing? You knew the kid.”

The bartender said, “I think it was all a mistake, somebody thought Frank was another guy. He wasn't the kind to be in any trouble.”

“That's the truth. If you was picking a guy to be in a mess, Frankie'd be the last guy you'd pick,” Danny said, as I glanced at his sightless eyes, caused by trachoma and dirty ring canvas.

“How about Turner, the detective? Ever see him before?”

The blind man said, “I never heard him,” and Jimmy added, “That's all the cops been asking me. I keep telling 'em, I only seen him once—out there on the sidewalk, dead.”

“Any strangers in here the night of the shootings?”

“You kidding?” Jimmy said, rinsing out a rag, running it over the top of the bar. “Always a few strangers in a bar. But that night, had mostly neighborhood regulars, to hear about Frank winning the dough.”

“Brown was in,” Danny said suddenly.

“He was?” Jimmy said, rinsing the rag again. “Don't recall seeing him.”

“He was in,” Danny said. “I remember his voice—never forget his voice.”

I motioned for another round of beers, asked, “Who's Brown?”

“Some know-it-all jerk,” Jimmy said. “I been living and rooming around this block for the last... well... forty-five years at least.”

“Me too, even longer,” Danny said.

“Look down the block and you'll see an empty lot across the street. Still got some wide stone steps at the front of it. Used to be a church at one time. That was about 1915, wasn't it, Danny?”

“Right.”

“Well, just before the war, around 1917, old Rev. Atkins died in an auto accident and the church sort of went out of business, if you can say that about a church. Then some German society took it over, put in a lot of dough making it into a gym. Along comes the war and the place is shut down, then it burns, just part of the foundation and steps left. Lot of people think the fire wasn't no accident, you know how feelings ran high during the war. I never thought so, but...”

“What's this got to do with this Brown?” I asked.

“He was coming to that,” Danny cut in. “One night this Brown comes in here and gets to talking to one of the boys— Frankie, come to think of it.”

“Yeah, was him and Frankie arguing,” Jimmy said.

“About what?” I put in.

“Nothing, really. Brown says he was born around here and remembered Frankie's father and mother, that he and Andersun was born a few days apart. Just bar talk, except he said he remembered when the church burned, only it wasn't a church then, and anyway it was before his time.”

“And nobody ever remembered seeing him around,” Danny added. “Why should a guy bull about junk like that? What got me, was his voice, had a kind of twang to it, funny way of saying 'r.' Nobody born here talk that way.”

“Don't remember nothing odd about his voice,” Jimmy said.

The blind man finished his beer. “But I did. I used to wrestle a lot upstate, around Elmira and Ithaca. People talk with that kind of a twang up there.”

“That was the argument—about whether this Brown had been born around here?” I asked.

Jimmy nodded, as he washed and dried his hands. “That's all. Just remembered it because of his lying about the church burning.”

“What did he look like? Recall his first name?”

The bartender examined a spot on his white apron for a moment. “Think he had some ordinary name like Jack, or Joe. As for looks—this was months ago—didn't make any special impression on me. I'd say he was around thirty, stocky, I think, and short.”

“Dressed well?”

“Hell, I don't remember.”

“Color of his hair?”

“Yeah, yeah, I remember that—red!” Jimmy said happily. “Yes sir, real red hair. I remember because not only was it awful red, but he was arguing a lot and I was thinking what they say about redheads being scrappers.”

“He was a mean one, I could tell by his voice,” Danny said. “I think he had a friend, another guy, with him.”

Jimmy shrugged. “I don't remember nobody with him.”

“Let's get back to the night of the killings—did Brown leave before Andersun?” I asked.

Jimmy laughed, showing a mossy set of uppers. “Jeez, mac, I didn't say he was in that night.”

“But he was,” the blind man said. “I been trying to remember where I'd heard his voice before and just now, when you was asking about strangers, it came to me.”

“You only heard the voice twice, with a three-month time lapse between, and you're still sure it's the same voice?” I asked.

“Sure, it's been hanging around the back of my mind ever since the shootings. Like when something is on the tip of your tongue and you can't remember it. I don't mistake a voice. It was him all right.”

“Danny, did you tell this to the cops?”

He shook his big blind head. “Telling you, I just thought of it.”

I turned to the barkeep. “Did you tell the police about this Brown?”

“Of course not. I only saw him once before and as for his being here on the night of the murders, can't prove it by me,” Jimmy said.

The clock up near the TV set said it was ten to four. I gave Jimmy one of my cards, said I'd see him again. I shook hands with Danny and neither of us tried the grip-of-iron shake, and I took off. There wasn't time to drive to the police station so I dropped into a drugstore, phoned Lieutenant Franzino. A gruff, impatient voice asked, “Yeah? Lieutenant Franzino speaking.”

“I'm Barney Harris—the private detective Lieutenant Swan spoke to you about.”

“Aha. What's on your mind, Mr. Harris?” To my surprise his voice became mild and polite.

“Maybe nothing, but I've been talking to the bartender and a big blind man in the Grand Cafe. They told me there was a fellow named Brown, first name something ordinary like Joe, Jack, or John. He's about thirty years old, bright red hair, stocky build, and has a slight twang to his voice. He was in the Grand several months ago, claimed he was born in the neighborhood, that he knew Franklin Andersun. But nobody remembered him, including Andersun. Also, from a mistake he made in talking about a church that burned, the barkeep knew he was lying about being born in the block. The...”

“What's this add up to, Harris?”

“Maybe just a lot of bar talk. The blind man claims he was in the Grand again on the night of the killings, before the shooting. The bartender doesn't remember him being there that night, but the blind guy is positive, says he's good on remembering voices. I figure it's too much coincidence.”

“Yeah. Sure a better lead than we have now. A Tom, Dick, or Harry Brown with red hair. Be tough to locate, but we'll give it a look. Thanks, Mr. Harris.”

“Danny, the blind man, said the twang in Brown's voice reminded him of the way people speak upstate, around Ithaca or Elmira.”

“Good. We'll look into it. Guess Swan checked you out on what we know. Stay in touch, Mr. Harris. I realize you have to show some... uh... work, so I don't mind you looking about, only kind of keep out of my way. I don't like tripping over private dicks. Get me, Mr. Harris?”

“Sure. Don't worry, I never overwork myself.”

I drove uptown and over to Audubon Avenue and parked outside the private school that was keeping me broke, but with the overcrowding in the public schools it was worth the strain. It wasn't four-thirty yet and I lit a cigarette, thought about the case, about the blind muscleman, and mostly about Betsy Turner. There was something phony about her, something I couldn't quite put my finger on.

Finally the kids came out and Ruthie came skipping over to me, looking good in the dress I'd bought last month. She was all long legs and arms as I opened the door and she climbed in, kissed me twice, said between kisses, “Hello, Daddy.” Then she drew back and rubbed her lips. “You smell of beer.”

“That a way to talk to the poppa?” I said, starting the car.

“How many beers did you have?”

“A million, Miss Nosey.”

“Are we going to take a ride?”

“Maybe a very short one. Want chopped meat for supper?”

“Why aren't we going for a ride?”

“I have to go out this evening.”

“Daddy, I don't like it when you go out. Where you going?”

“Have to work. Get May Weiss to stay with you.”

“I don't like May, she's stuck-up. Always doing her homework, never wants to play. Why can't you stay home and read to me, or I'll watch you exercise?”

“Told you why, have to work,” I said, running my right hand over her silky brown pigtail. Her hair was due for a washing.

“Not sneaking off to a movie, Daddy?”

“No, honey, you're the only girl I take to the movies. And what I'm working on sounds crazier than any movie.”

We drove up to Yonkers and back, cutting over to Broadway to escape the toll bridge. Ruthie talked all the time as usual. She said she'd seen my cousin Jake Winston, the mailman, on the street. He'd stopped at the school to tell her he wanted us to come out to his place in Ridgewood on Sunday. Way all my relations kept after me, got me a little sore—I could take care of the kid okay.

I stopped at a super market and Ruthie went in with me, asked, “Can we make a Jello pie tonight?”

“Guess we have time for that. But I have to feed you, start your bath, take a shower and shave myself, and be out of the house by seven-thirty.”

“Maybe you really aren't going to the movies... taking a shave at night. Here's the chopped meat.”

“We'll get a thick steak. We're eating high on the hog tonight.”

She looked up at me with big questioning eyes. “What does that mean, Daddy?”

“Means a person is eating real meat, instead of the pig's feet, the insides, or the tail.”

Ruthie screwed up her pug nose. “But why do people eat the feet of pigs and the insides, Daddy?”

“Usually because they're too poor to buy the other parts,” I said, knowing I'd started something.

THE MORNING of April eleventh was the start of a pleasantly cool spring day, but the man rushing into a fourth-rate hotel off lower Eighth Avenue was sweating. His name was Martin Pearson and he was thirty-two years old, stocky, and of average height. He had a very ordinary face, except for his thick bushy hair, which at the moment was dyed a sandy blond. His worn tweed suit had been purchased in a Times Square store some six years before, the clean white shirt came from Amsterdam, the brown knit tie had been bought on the Rue de la Paix, and the shoes in Genoa. The old leather camera-gadget case hanging from his left shoulder had been ordered from a Sears Roebuck catalog many years ago.

Pearson was rushing and sweating because some twenty minutes before, while sipping his morning coffee and reading a paper in a Seventy-third Street cafeteria, he had decided to murder a man.

Nodding at the desk clerk who was still half asleep, Pearson ran up the single flight of wooden steps, turned into a dim hallway, knocked sharply on a door with a dirty metal eight nailed to it. There wasn't any answer and he knocked again, harder. After a moment a man's voice cautiously asked, “Yes? Who is it?”

“Me. Got to see you in a hurry, Harold.” Martin was talking to his partner, Sam Lund, who was registered at the hotel under the name of Harold Bender.

“What's the rush, Marty? I'm... uh... busy.”

“Damn it, open the door!”

Lund stalled some more because he had a girl in his room. Pearson kept pounding on the door and finally Sam climbed out of bed, after telling the girl not to worry, and partly opened the door, to explain the situation. But Pearson pushed the door open as the girl sat up in bed and tried to cover her meaty breasts with her hands.

For a second the room looked like a blackout tableau in a burlesque show: the dingy room, the nude girl on the bed, Pearson staring at her like an angry husband, and Sam Lund-wearing shorts—calmly walking over to the dresser and lighting a cigarette. Lund was a large man in his early thirties and if his body was flabby it still showed signs of having been muscular at one time. His thin-featured face was overhand-some, but except for a fringe of hair above his ears, he was completely bald. His head had that hard polished look as though hair had never grown there.

The girl, in a statement she made at police headquarters several weeks later, said, “They both had the manners of a couple of bums, not even the decency to turn their backs while I dressed.”

Q: You met Lund in a bar near the hotel the night before and agreed to spend the night with him for fifteen dollars. Is that correct?

A: Yes, sir. And I was surprised at the way Harold—that's the name he gave me—acted, because he seemed like a smart guy, a good talker. I loved the way he talked, his voice was so clear and smooth, like a ...

Q: Let's get on with this—what happened after Pearson came into the room?

A: I admit I'm a hustler, but I still ask for some respect as a lady. I bawled them out and finally the smaller one, Pearson you say he is, turned his back and told me, “Look, sister, get dressed and take a walk. We have things to do.”

I remember, I told him I sure was glad I wasn't his sister. He was getting steamed and then Harold said to me, “Sorry to rush you, honey, but we're salesmen and Marty is anxious to hit the road with our new line.” I got my bra and stuff and...

Q: When you met Lund the night before, did he say what he did for a living?

A: No, sir. I never got around to asking. But I figured he was a salesman—had the voice to sell and liked to gab. And he didn't have much dough, I could tell. Yes sir, I remember, I thought he was a small-time salesman.

Q: Did you see any guns in Lund's room?

A: No, sir. And if I had I would have called the cops at once. I know better than to fool with hoods. Although I sure would never have suspected Harold—or the other one—for any rough stuff. No, sir.

When the girl had gone and Lund had locked the door, Pearson cursed him, asking, “Are you crazy? This is the one thing that can foul us up! Bet you were drunk, too.”

“Relax, I wasn't drunk, merely in the mood for a girl,” Lund said, yawning. “Anyway I'm checking out of this dump today. 'Mr. Bender' got his registered letter yesterday. Why all the ...?”

“You dummy, she heard you call me Marty!”

“So what? That was a slip on my part but you got me rattled, barging in like... Cool off, Marty, our luck's been riding high all these months and...”

“Has it? Remember this one?” Pearson took a neatly folded but hastily torn part of a newspaper out of his pocket, flung it on the bed. Lund walked over and raised the shade, read the paper, while Pearson saw a heel of a whiskey pint on the dresser, finished it with a single gulp. Sam sat on the bed, his face going pale, as he looked up from the short news item and said softly, “Damn! Damn! Of all the miserable breaks! How could we possibly foresee a thing like this, the dumb jerk winning the money?”

“We couldn't,” Martin said. “One of those things, a break we have to meet.”

“Throw me that pack of butts on the dresser. What do we do now, chuck the whole deal?”

Pearson, who had been studying the empty pint bottle, put it down and threw the cigarettes at his partner, watched as Lund lit one and began puffing on it nervously. After an awkward silence Lund asked again, “Now what—we chuck the deal?”

“We can't chuck it. Once they start investigating, in time everything will point to us. And I don't see why we should give up anything. There's another out, if we act quickly. Before this guy gets his passport application in.”

“I don't get it.”

“Yes you do, you know exactly what I'm talking about, Sam.”

Lund jumped off the bed and said fiercely, “If you're talking about what I think you are—forget it. For Christsakes, that's murder!”

Pearson nodded. “Yes, that's what it will most certainly be.

I've tried to rationalize it, call it other names. It's plain murder.”

“Marty, talk sense! We've pulled a lot of... of... angles, but I never thought of myself, of us, as real criminals. My God, Marty, we can't murder a man!”

“Don't talk so loudly. I don't see what choice we have. These things build up, grow. A petty crime, then a bigger one, and finally the big leagues—the biggest of them all. We have a ...”

“No! I don't even want to discuss that!”

“Sam, you've had a big night, you don't understand our situation. We never thought of ourselves as criminals because a criminal is one who gets caught, just as a murderer is one convicted of killing. We've been very good, the perfect... criminals, and we still will be the...”

“Damn it, Marty, stop talking! I won't go for murder and that's final!”

“Cut the acting and keep your voice down. And listen to me. Sam, besides our boat tickets we have a little over two hundred bucks left. If we try to ditch the whole business, we're flat broke. Also, as I tried to tell you, if we let him go through with his trip, our game is exposed whether we chuck it or not, and we'll never know when they'll catch up with us—even in Europe. Once he makes out that application, we're finished. I don't have to remind you that we've broken several Federal laws, that the least we'll get is five to ten years. Is that what you want, to be broke and running the rest of our lives? To finally end up in the pen?”

Sam stood up, staring at the wall and seemingly so deep in thought he didn't answer.

Martin pointed to a lipstick smear on the pillow. “You want to be sleeping with cheap whores in a stinking room or sunning yourself at Juan-les-Pins with Gabby? Would you rather be hustling for small change here as a handy man/ or a famous actor with your own motion-picture company?”

“Don't paint no pictures for me—you know damn well what I want. But murder—no!”

“These aren't pictures, Sam, these are facts.” Martin pointed around the room. “It's a fact that a flea bag like this, or worse, will be your home from now on—if you can afford a room. It's also a fact we can still wake up at ten and have a swim and a big breakfast and before it gets too hot, ride over to Nice or Cape Ferrat or San Remo. You always liked San Remo the best. Sam, the main fact is this: we have over forty thousand dollars waiting for us if we continue to use our heads.”

“Think we'll be the richest jokers to ever sit in the electric chair!”

Martin smiled bitterly. “Your stupid jokes. Sam, killing was never a part of our plans, and we're not a couple of goons, we won't be caught.”

Sam crushed his cigarette against the wall. “We have been smart, the best ever. But using a gun is where we start being dumb.”

“Killing is a last resort, but can you think of any other way? We could try robbing him of the money, but that might not work, and it's too risky.”

“And murder isn't?” Sam snapped.

“Look, Sam, the police are efficient because most killings fit one of several patterns. But this—be no motive anybody but us could possibly know about and... Look, I once read where some police authority said the perfect murder would have to be an insane act where a man suddenly shoots a total stranger on the street—no motive, no connection, no possible clues. That's the first thing came to me when I read the paper—we're shooting a stranger.”

“He saw us—you—before,” Sam said, lighting another cigarette. “Marty, there's things a man can do and can't do. I can't go through with a murder. That's all!”

“Merely saying 'That's all' doesn't solve anything for us. I'll do the actual trigger pulling, if that will make you feel any better. Yes, he saw us. He spoke to me once, a casual conversation in a bar some three months ago—and I was using a phony name. Who can remember that except him, and he'll be dead? For all practical purposes we're walking up to a total stranger and shooting him without rhyme or reason. Unless we're nabbed at the scene of the killing—and that we'll work out carefully, of course—the police will have to be lucky, downright stupid fumbling lucky, to even get on our trail.”

“Murder is out.”

Pearson walked over and shook his partner. “Stop talking like a goddamn parrot! If we get rid of him we're safe, have money, the good life. I'm back with Therese, you're a big actor. If he lives we're bums the rest of our lives and end up serving a lot of time. Killing is our only out. As you said, we couldn't foresee this, but we're in it and getting in deeper is our only escape.”

“But... Marty, you talk so calmly about... murder!” Sam said, pushing the smaller man away.

“I'm not calm. I'm scared crazy, but not that frightened I've stopped thinking, can't realize what has to be done. Be simple, we come upon him alone in the street today—it has to be today —best tonight. One quick shot and we're gone before anybody finds the body. Then we keep on with the cases we have cooking. Another month or two, we leave the country.”

“Why not leave at once after, I mean... if... we do it?”

“Because we haven't got enough and what difference will it make? If they're on to us, they can extradite us from Europe. No, we keep on going as usual, like nothing happened. Sam, I've thought this out, racked my head till it hurts. How can they ever connect us with it? How can the police possibly stumble upon us? What can go wrong?”

Sam looked for an ashtray, finally thumbed his cigarette out the one window. “Marty, up to now it's been like a game— the whole works: outsmarting the army, the French cops, the stuff we've been doing here. It worked smooth because we never hurt nobody, worked our own angles... but now, a deliberate cold-blooded murder, I can't go that, I just can't!”

Pearson said coldly, “And I can't think of living without Therese. We've put in over five months on this, we already have about twenty-five grand set for sure, another fifteen thousand in the works. I'm not throwing all that over because this kid gets lucky. Get this through your dumb head—there's little risk—he himself won't have the slightest idea why we're killing him.”

“As you said, the cops can be lucky.”

“Luck has been riding with us, all down the line.” Pearson opened his camera bag and dropped two Lugers on the bed. “Look how lucky it was I never sold these, held on to them.”

Sam stared at the guns, his thin lips moving. Finally he pulled himself together, asked quietly, “Threatening me, Marty?”

“Killing you would be a wrong move, leave too many trails. But I want Therese so badly I considered it. Think it over, Sam. It's rough but we've been living on cream so far, can't complain. Get dressed, take a shower, take a walk and get the air... start thinking. Have a good breakfast. Think, then tell me what else we can do but kill him. Show me any other out, even a cockeyed one, and I'll be the first to take it. But you know killing is the only way. Think about it, Sam, think real hard... we have a couple of hours.”

CHAPTER 2

SHE HAD four very large rooms in one of these old, high-ceilinged apartment houses that never look like much on the outside. It was a front apartment overlooking the Hudson River, and full of severe modern furniture that looked uncomfortable —or maybe it was the violent colors. Everything was a patch-quilt of brash red and blinding yellows and mysterious purples. And somehow the effect didn't quite come off—it was as if she'd copied a room and overdone it. One wall was lined with books—in colorful jackets too—but they all looked too new, as if she joined every book club out and stacked the books away as they came.

Betsy Turner was wearing a Chinese-like outfit—tight red pants and a loose yellow house coat that should have given her an exotic look, but her kid's face was an almost comical contrast. Her face reminded me of the Kewpie dolls that used to be so popular—her nose and eyes and lips took up all her face, almost seemed to be overcrowding it.

Frankly I didn't get the play—the carefully made-up face, those tight pants showing off her strong legs, the teasing outline of firm breasts whenever the coat touched them. Either Mrs. Turner was expecting somebody after I left, or she wanted other kinds of work for her thirty a day.

To keep my eyes off her, I said “Hello” and glanced around at the several amateurish oils on the wall—like those pre-sketched canvas deals where you fill in the colors by number. In one corner of the living room there was an easel with a half-finished painting of a river scene—and without numbers. Near it was a large TV set, and near that one of these expensive record players. I said, “Nice place here. You paint much?”

“I play at it. I also decorated this apartment. Do you like it?”

From the tone of her voice it seemed important to her that I liked it. “Rather unusual. Yeah, I like it,” I said. And the canvases, the books, the stacks of records—they could mean a lot of things, including loneliness. But hell, the fine ebony wood cabinet of the TV was easily a cop's salary for a month, or two, and the high-fidelity record player wasn't anything you found in a box of Cracker Jacks.... No wonder Ed Turner walked around with his hand out. And considering the short time he'd been on the force, he was a joker with a talent for letting people see his palms.

“I made this Chinese house coat too,” she said, turning like a model for me to see it—and her. She sure packed a healthy figure. Only she still gave me this Kewpie-doll feeling—an expensive one.

“Looks wonderful. Very becoming.”

She smiled faintly, like a kid with a good report card. “Please sit down over there, Mr. Harris.” She pointed to a veneer bucket chair with dainty wrought-iron legs.

I sat down on a pigskin hassock, said, “Doubt if the chair is guaranteed to hold 248 pounds.”

She sat down on a banana-yellow contour couch.

There was a moment of silence and I studied her legs, which were worth studying. She motioned toward a bottle and several glasses on a marble table with driftwood legs. “Noilly Prat, Mr. Harris?”

“No thanks, Mrs. Turner. And what is it?” We sounded like a soap opera.

She smiled and her lips were thick and red and girlish, and my temperature shot up. “Vermouth—French. I'm not much of a drinker, but this place has been giving me the jitters ever since Ed... died. It's a jinx apartment, and it caused our first real fight.”

“That so?” I said politely. People who always brag how little they drink are usually in the lush class.

“Yes, I never really enjoyed this place,” she went on. “After Ed passed the police exam, but before he was called, he was head of the shipping department and I was a steno in the front office—that's how we met. After we married we couldn't find an apartment and lived in a room for several months. Then Ed found this apartment and insisted we take it, even though the rent was more than our combined weekly salaries. I didn't mind scrimping because I wanted a place of our own, and this even had furniture—not this stuff—and we didn't have to pay anything under the table. Then I found out why it was vacant —a man had hung himself with a tie from the bathroom door.”

Following her over-red fingernail I saw a white door off the cocoa-colored foyer. “Must have been a small man to do it with a tie,” I said brightly.

She hesitated, not sure if I was kidding her, then decided I wasn't, said, “I didn't want the place then, it gave me the creeps. And using his furniture too. But Ed insisted. I didn't know till then how unhappy he'd been in our room, making coffee on a hot plate, using the window sill for an icebox. Oh, Ed always liked to live so big. He even hinted we'd part if I didn't take the apartment. I nearly had a fit when we moved in. Ed had to stay with me while I took a bath or I'd get to staring at the door till I saw a body swinging there. Ed said I was a baby but I couldn't help it.”

“Able to go to the bathroom alone now?” She sat up, face flushed. “Mr. Harris! Don't get fresh!” I almost slipped off the hassock—Mrs. Turner was out of this planet—I hadn't been called “fresh” since I was in knickers. “It may look... odd, asking you to my apartment, but don't get any ideas, Mr. Harris. Nor do I like you making fun of me.”

“Merely asked a question, Mrs. Turner,” I said, afraid I'd smile myself out of a job. “Only wondering if the place still spooks you.”

She sort of pulled herself together, leaned back on the couch. “It was bad till... One morning several weeks after we moved in I was feeling... uh... unwell... had to stay home. Ed couldn't be with me, we'd have both lost our jobs. I was going crazy, imagining all sorts of things when a woman came to the door, said she had worked as a maid for the suicide and did I want to hire her? Of course we couldn't afford that but I was so happy to see anyone I asked her in for coffee and we talked about the dead man. When she told me he'd been a pansy, I don't know why, I was no longer afraid. Till now. With Ed a suicide everything scares me. But that's enough about me. What have you been doing, Mr. Harris?”

“Checked with Lieutenant Swan on the details of the case. By the way, Mr. Turner ever mention a man named Brown?”

“No. And we haven't any friends by that name, or...”

“Have many friends?”

She popped her eyes open like I'd jabbed her in the belly. “Why do you ask that? As a matter of fact, we didn't. I'm not the outgoing type and Ed—he liked to roam around alone, always looking for what he called suspects. As for his friends on the force, frankly I hated his being a policeman. It changed Ed. When a man makes his work hunting down other men, that's not good.”

“I suppose cops are necessary.”

“Mr. Harris, doctors are necessary too, but suppose a doctor limited himself to handling cancer cases all day, day after day— in time he'd probably become infected himself. A cop, always working with criminals, I think he becomes infected too. After a time the cop and the criminal blend, the hunter and the hunted become one.” Her voice, which had been full and strong, went small again as she slipped me a smile, added, “No offense, Mr. Harris. Oh, I can't keep calling you Mister Harris. I'll call you Barney and you may call me Betsy.”

“You call me what you wish, I'll keep using Mrs. Turner,” I said, annoyed at her ”... you may call me ...” I was really annoyed because whatever there was about her that troubled me... still troubled me.

She shrugged—a very sexy movement. “As you like. But I didn't mean to be personal when I said police work was a dirty profession.”

“Can't offend me. I only stumbled into the... eh... profession myself. I'm an auto mechanic. My wife was in the insurance business and she got me a job checking on stolen cars for insurance companies. Usually the engine numbers are filed, other changes made to disguise the heap. It was my job to identify the cars, also check into phony auto accidents, and the title of private detective went with the job. I did that for five or six years and when my wife died I went into the private-eye business because of the irregular hours—gives me a chance to call for my daughter in school, be around the neighborhood.”

“I'm sorry to hear about your wife,” she said, in the proper sad tone. “Did you raise the girl by yourself?”

“Yes, and quite well, too.”

“How old is she?”

“Ruthie will be six in two months from the twenty-fifth.”

“Barney, I don't mean to be personal, but did your wife die in childbirth?”

“No, we adopted Ruthie. My wife was too old to have kids.” I saw the puzzled look come into her eyes and wondered if she'd come out and ask me. She did.

“But you don't look more than thirty-four.”

“I'm thirty-seven, Mrs. Turner. I was thirty-two when I married my wife and she was forty-one. I was her second husband, and I was infatuated with her beauty. You see she never tried to look younger than she was, rather she was always a beautiful forty-one-year-old woman. Maybe that's a beauty secret. Now let's get back to Ed.”

Betsy nodded. “I'm crazy about children. Ed was too, till he became a cop... then he always wanted to wait.”

“How long have you been married?”

“About four years,” she said, pouring herself a taste of vermouth, sipping it as though it was hard stuff. “I'm from a small town way out on Long Island. I had always looked forward to New York City, but I found it such a lonely place. I met Ed on the job, my first real beau, and after a month we were married. It was like a dream, we were so happy, so much in love. Ed was tender and considerate, full of laughs. But he changed from the moment he entered the Police Academy. He became ambitious.”

“Most wives like that. My wife tried to inject some ambition into me, but it didn't take,” I said, wondering why her words sounded false although she said them straight, as if she meant them.

“Ambition made Ed tough and cruel. A few days after he was appointed to the force, we were in the subway, going to a movie downtown. Ed kept staring at a man across the aisle, told me, 'He looks like a guy I saw on a Fed-wanted flier. Dope case. Except his hair is black and this fellow was a blond.'

“I told him to forget it but Ed was always talking about making a 'good' pinch, jumping to a detective. All he did at night was to read those wanted circulars. Well, he kept studying this man, going over his face feature by feature, the way he'd been trained. Finally he said, 'That's him!' and went over and showed his badge—made a scene. The man denied he was the criminal but Ed yanked out a fistful of his hair, waved the bloody hair at me and shouted, 'The roots are blond!' Then he punched the man in the face and he was all blood.”

“Was the man the one wanted?”

She nodded. “But how I hated that badge, the gun, the handcuffs, the blackjack!”

“Mrs. Turner, a rough world makes for rough people. The worst cop hater squeals the loudest for the police when he's in a jam. True, there are incompetent cops, nightstick happy. Also, in this corrupt world, if crime doesn't pay—being a cop doesn't pay much either. Now that I've finished my sermon for the day, let's get down to cases—this case. You have any boy friends, past or present?”

She jumped to her feet with cat speed. “How dare you say that?” Her big soft eyes were big and mad now.

“Take it slow, Mrs. Turner,” I said calmly. “I'm working for you, remember? I have to sift through everything. A jealous boy friend could cause murder, or suicide.”

“How dare you... I never looked at another man! I never... what sort of a mind have you?”

“A detective's mind—maybe. Look, stop the how-dare-you line. Mrs. Turner, you asked me up here. I don't mind a lot of social chatter, but at the moment I feel ill at ease, a bit like the rear end of a horse. I don't mean to be crude, or maybe I do, but the point is, I have to ask questions and I'd like some answers—without frills, if possible.”

“You're crude, rude, and... and...!”

“Let's start over again,” I cut in. “How about Ed, any other woman on his mind?”

“No! No!” Her face got so red I thought she was going to scream.

“Mrs. Turner, being a busybody is my job. You said in my office that you and Ed were very happy, yet all you've done tonight is carp about his job, his...”

“We were very much in love and happy! Get that through your thick head, you lummox!” she shouted in my face. Then she caught herself, sat down on the couch again, said in a normal voice, “I didn't like what his job was doing to him, but that doesn't make us unhappy.”

“Have a job, Mrs. Turner?”

“No.”

“This apartment, the furniture, your clothes—a detective's salary wouldn't make it. You knew your husband was keeping his hand out, but...”

“Ed wasn't dishonest!” she snapped.

“What did he do, win a lot of prize money like the Andersun kid? This case is tough enough, has the cops on the ropes—if you really want results, don't hold out on me.”

“I told you, I never knew much about his job—never wanted to hear about it. He gave me money for the house. I never asked questions. Ed didn't like to be questioned about money matters. My God, you must think I'm some cheap, little ugly tramp that...”

“Don't know enough about you to say if you're cheap or not, or a tramp. But you're not little, or ugly. Now let's put the gloves away and get down to...”

Her eyes became soft again—that kid look—as she said, “Thanks. I do want to find out if... Ed was a suicide. It's so terribly important to me. I'm sorry I blew up, but you are a bit abrupt... and crude.”

I wondered what the “thanks” meant. “One more crude question, Mrs. Turner. Why do you keep harping on this suicide kick? You say Ed was happy, and ambitious, hard—that's not the picture of a suicide.”

“But if he was shot in the back without...?”

“Suicides are upset, depressed. You keep raising the suicide angle.... What was Ed upset about?”

She stared at the floor, finally whispered, “We had a fight that night. Something very personal.”

“Like what?”

She raised her head and glared at me, said, “None of your business! I said it was personal!”

“But you hired me to find out the most personal thing a person can do—kill himself. What did you fight about?”

She sighed, leaned back against the couch, said in her small voice, “We were... incompatible. For months Ed hadn't slept with me.”

I didn't say a word, didn't know what to say. “I think he... he got some sort of... thrill... out of beating men. He once told me that. Maybe that was why he stopped... having relations with... me. On the night he was killed we... had a scene and I accused him of n-not being a man. He got so angry I thought he was going to hit me. He ran out of here. Less than two hours later he was dead.” The words were forced out, dull little sounds. She added, “This has to be confidential. Don't even tell the police, please.” I stood up.

“Now you see why I must know—for my own peace of mind. I feel as though I killed him.”

“If that's all you have to go on, Mrs. Turner, I still think you ought to save your money. Let the police handle this.”

“I'll be the judge of that,” she said, and her kid's voice was cold and snooty. “What do you plan to do tomorrow?”

“If you're going to tell me how to operate, then you don't need me.”

“I'm not telling you your business, but I am interested, of course.”

For a moment I wanted to walk out on the case—but only for a moment. Then I said calmly, “This Brown lead might be something, although it's a long shot and doesn't make much sense. Takes me months to check on all the Browns in the city, but the police will do it quicker, so I'll leave it alone. I expect to talk to members of the Andersun family. I'm sure his slaying will explain everything. Sound like a good day's work?”

I walked to the door and she followed, without speaking. At the door I turned to see her looking at herself in a wall mirror, moistening her lips, straightening her bangs. “You'll be here tomorrow at eight?” she asked.

I nodded and opened the door.

“Barney, have you a picture of your daughter?”

Taking out my wallet, I showed her Ruthie's laughing face. She said, “What an adorable child.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Turner.”

“I wish you'd call me Betsy. Mrs. Turner sounds so... jarring.”

“Best we keep it jarring, for the time being. Good night, Mrs. Turner.”

“Good night, Barney.”

In the lobby downstairs I asked the hall man if there was a public phone and he showed me one back of a door that led to the service entrance. I kept the door open as I dialed, had a clear view of the lobby. I told my baby sitter, “This is Barney Harris. Looks like I'm stuck for a brace of hours. May, can you do me a favor and sleep over on the couch? Sure, ask your folks if it's okay. How's Ruthie doing? Oh, I'll probably be home around... three or four in the morning. You bet, overtime is double pay. Look, you go downstairs and ask your folks and I'll call back in about five minutes.”

I hung up and lit a cigarette, wondered if it would be smart to chat with the hall man. But he wouldn't tell me anything about Mrs. Turner. Probably the first thing the cops checked was what she was doing on the night of the murder.

An old couple came in and talked to the hall man as they waited for the elevator. I finished my butt and called back and May said her folks didn't like her staying out all night. I told her I'd phone them. Instead I phoned Cy O'Hara, asked him if he could baby-sit. He told me, “Look, Barney, it's near nine now and I'm to hell and gone across the Bronx. Besides, I'd have to wait till the wife came home from the movies. Probably wouldn't get there before 3 a.m. myself.”

“I just thought maybe you could leave now. See you at the office.”

“Sorry, Barney.”

“Forget it. I'll get somebody. See you tomorrow, Cy.” I couldn't blame anybody for turning me down—being single I could never return the baby-sitting favor. I got the Weiss number from information and spent ten minutes convincing May's mother that this was an emergency and after all, the kid was in the same apartment house and what could happen to her? She finally said all right, but just this once. Said she'd go up and see that May was comfortable.

I went out and sat in my car, got some jazz on the radio. It wasn't hard to spot the Turner windows—not with all those slashing colors. Waiting is the thing a detective does the most of and I killed time by going through the papers in my pockets, tearing up the ads, the old bills, a letter asking if I was interested in a “Perfect Man” and weight-lifting contest at a Brooklyn YMCA; I was way out of shape for contest lifting, and maybe getting too old.

Mostly couples went into the apartment house, and a few men who somehow didn't look like “lovers.” At ten-thirty the lights in her living room went out, then I saw her pulling down the blinds of her bedroom, and soon that light went out.

At 3:20 a.m. I drove home. Betsy Turner hadn't gone out, nor had the lights been turned on again. She hadn't been waiting for a man. That meant she'd dolled up in that sexy outfit for me.

And like the rest of the case, that didn't make any sense.

THE ARMY didn't make Martin Pearson a hustler—the war did. In an interview in the Syracuse Tribune, Pearson's mother, Mrs. Francine Pearson, blamed the army:

I'll never believe Martin is a murderer. Our family has lived here since the days of 1776 and not a single Pearson has ever been in trouble with the law—for any reason whatsoever. My Martin was raised as a sober, hard-working boy, but after those three-and-a-half years he spent in the army, he came home different. He was still a fine boy but it seemed to me his eyes were restless, always searching for something. He never seemed to look a person in the eyes any more.

But the army only taught a comparative few how to work an angle, while war made scrounging the main occupation of most of the world's population—scrounging for food, the fast buck, the fast lira or franc: hustling for life itself.

Pearson was born on a small farm some twenty-four miles from Syracuse, New York on August 25, 1920. The farm was four miles from the “town” of Bay Corners, which consisted of a feed store, a garage, and a general store run by one Andrew Marsh. The rear of this store was also the movie house with several rows of wooden benches. Twice a week (and every night during July and August) Mr. Marsh squeezed his barrel body into his homemade projection booth and ran his old 16mm projector. Farmers supported Bay Corners the year around, but in the summer passing motorists and the campers at a near-by lake gave Marsh a boom business.

Martin was the fourth child and received little attention from the rest of the family. As soon as he was big enough, he did his share of the farm work. When he was twelve years old a small incident changed his entire life. Mary Marsh—the plump ten-year-old daughter of the general-store owner—sported a new bike, the result of selling twenty-five subscriptions to a farm magazine.

Martin also wanted a bike and knowing she had covered all the people in Bay Corners (fifty-seven according to the last census) he spent the snow-free days of the winter tramping from farm to farm. By spring he had twenty-five subs and sent away for the bike. Two weeks later the rural mailman handed Martin a large package, although obviously much too small for a bicycle. An enclosed letter stated that there had been a misunderstanding on Martin's part—the bicycle was given for a hundred and twenty-five subscriptions. For his twenty-five subs they were sending him a box camera, three rolls of film, and a developing kit. The magazine sincerely hoped this would be satisfactory-

It wasn't. In a rage Martin accused Mary Marsh of lying. She said, “Honest, I thought it was twenty-five subs. Poppa sold them for me at the counter and I never did know how many he got. Gee, Marty, nobody here ever had a camera, except the summer people.”

Martin was still angry but he took pictures of his father and mother on a sunny day, developed them in the barn at night— carefully following the instruction booklet—and his folks and brothers stared at the hazy snapshots with awe. Martin realized the camera made him a person of importance, began spending his extra dimes for photo supplies and booklets.

By the time he graduated from high school at eighteen, Martin had a second-hand press camera and was making a few dollars a week cycling from farm to farm, doing “portraits” of the farm families. Mary Marsh was about to enter Teachers Normal College at Oswego, and had grown to be a squat young woman whose only beauty was her “clear skin.” There weren't many young people in Bay Corners and it was understood Mary and Martin were “going steady,” mainly because Martin hung around Poppa Marsh's theater, seeing each movie over and over, trying to understand the technique of motion pictures. Martin suggested she ask her father if he could set up a “portrait studio” in the store during the summer months, use the theater for a dark room during the day. For rent Martin offered 30 per cent of the take. Mr. Marsh settled for 50 per cent and Martin was in business with some badly lettered signs in the store window.

Martin would hang around the summer campers, quietly taking candid shots of them swimming and horsing around, return the next day with enlargements in cardboard frames. The happy campers gave him from three to five dollars a picture and during the summer he made almost four hundred dollars. Mr. Marsh hinted Martin would be welcome as a son-in-law and it was decided they would be married as soon as Mary finished college.

Martin bought a second-hand roadster (In his confession Martin Pearson stated: “Until I was in the army I never had a brand-new thing in my life. All my clothing, shoes, and toys were hand-me-downs from my brothers.”) and the photography business went into a slump; all the local people had photos and in the winter there weren't any tourists. Martin took pictures of a forest fire and sold them to a Syracuse paper, soon became a free-lance photographer for several small country papers. He would ride around the countryside, snapping weddings, accidents, church bazaars; returning to sell pictures to the people in the photos, to the local papers, and sometimes to papers in Syracuse, Ithaca, and Buffalo. Although he worked hard, had a good summer trade, Martin never averaged more than thirty dollars a week for a year.

When he was twenty-two, Mary graduated from college and was immediately hired to teach at the Bay Corners school. She and Martin were married and he moved into the Marsh apartment over the store. By local standards they had a decent income and Martin wasn't unhappy—he was bored. Nine months after they were married he received his draft notice and according to his own statement: “If I felt anything it was relief.”

Martin landed in an infantry basic training camp in the South. Every Friday afternoon the soldiers were reviewed by the elderly colonel in command. One Friday, while he was barracks orderly, Martin took his miniature camera and photographed the parade grounds. Using the camera as an en-larger, he ran off a few prints, found the soldiers eager to get copies—they offered him as much as five dollars per copy. Martin immediately wired Mary to send him supplies and was soon doing a flourishing business. A camp newspaper was being set up and Martin was made a Pfc., kept on permanent cadre, and assigned to the paper.

A large and steady stream of new men went through the camp, each new G.I. wanting a picture to send home. Martin had a stock shot in which he lay behind a small hill and snapped the new soldier jumping over the top, rifle and bayonet in hand, a scowl on his face. This was the five-dollar special and every payday Martin's hands were full of money, and it was all profit as he was now using army film and paper. Mary wrote dutiful letters, sent him homemade cookies and asked when he was coming home on leave, but business was too good for Martin to take time off. The editor of the camp newspaper was an earnest young man who was transferred in 1943 to Yank magazine. He wrote Martin the magazine might be interested in him too, but Sergeant Pearson wasn't the least interested in leaving his cozy deal.

In 1944 the camp cadre was suddenly shipped to Camp Kilmer, broken up for overseas shipment. Martin spent a fast week-end with Mary in New York City and in a fit of tender love-making gave her eighteen hundred dollars he had saved up, told her he'd won it in a crap game.

Three weeks later Martin was hanging around a huge repple-depple outside Naples, seemed to be taking his basic over again. One day Pearson read an article in Yank by his former camp editor and wrote to him, asking if it was still possible to be assigned to the magazine. The Yank man was stationed in Rome and to Martin's astonishment he spoke to somebody on Stars and Stripes and Martin was soon sent to Rome as a photographer on the army newspaper.

Pearson learned a great deal about photography here, for the other cameramen had all been professional newspaper and magazine photographers. Martin covered the front lines, flew a bombing mission, and rode a PT boat to Yugoslavia. Life was exciting but he missed the money he'd made back in the States and Pearson was constantly searching for an angle. Black-market cigarettes were small time; a bigger deal was selling G.I. photographic paper to Italian studios, but that was risky.

Almost any sort of camera sold for several hundred dollars, while a good camera would bring a thousand or more from the G.I.'s. A Yank photographer had a map of Germany with the towns with camera factories circled and he often talked of coming into one of these towns with the troops and “grabbing off a Rolleiflex or a Leica for myself.”

Martin saw bigger possibilities, copied the map when he was sent into France after D-day. Months later Martin was with an infantry company when they stormed a German city noted for its expensive reflex cameras. While the soldiers were mopping up snipers, Martin drove a jeep directly to the factory, walked in holding a carbine to find Polish slave laborers still at work.

They stared at him without much emotion, only a kind of patient beaten weariness, and stood at their benches as Martin carried twenty-seven cameras (each in a neat wooden box) out to his jeep. The Nazi factory manager, finally convinced Martin was alone, at last came out of his office, demanded to know what the hell Pearson was doing.

Martin answered by busting his head open with the carbine, then shouted at the Poles, “You're free! Understand—free! Take what you want and scram!” He waved his hands at the open doors, but they still didn't move. Martin had taken all the rations out of his jeep, to make room for the cameras, and he handed these out. When he left he saw the Poles gulping the rations, then trooping out with whatever instruments they could carry, and soon the factory went up in flames.

After giving cameras to the motor pool sergeant, the PRO captain, and several others, Martin still had sixteen cameras and within the following month he was able to sell these for an average of $800 each, giving him nearly $13,000.

When the war in Europe was over Martin was stationed in Frankfurt, then in Paris, and in both cities he lived well, for he was an American sergeant with money and a PX card that meant cigarettes, candy, and soap. He got into some big crap games, and at one time his $13,000 went to $21,000 and once it shrunk to $4,500. He had $11,000 in Allied currency when he was awaiting shipment back to the States. He managed to change this into $8,500 in American money and money orders.

In January, 1946, Pearson was discharged and returned to Bay Corners. Mary Pearson had carefully banked all his allotment checks, already picked out a house they would buy, with a garage that could be made into a studio. He never told her about his money. In his confession Pearson stated:

I really don't know why I kept the money a secret from my wife. But I did. It wasn't the money, rather it was something I knew I could never explain to her. She would think it wrong and well... to me it wasn't a matter of right or wrong. I'd merely been lucky.

When they were married Mary, as the college graduate, had been the brains and Martin a simple farm boy. But the Martin Pearson who returned to Bay Corners knew all the angles, spoke French, Italian, and German, had slept with many women, seen bombed cities and dead men and women, sunned himself on Capri, the Venice Lido, the beach at Cannes. He looked at the plain, plump, country-school teacher who was his wife and told her he couldn't take Bay Corners any longer. He didn't love Mary, but she was his wife and ho wanted to make a try at living with her.

Martin said he didn't know exactly what he wanted to do, but he wanted to live in New York City. Of course Mary Pearson thought this foolish: she had her teacher's job in Bay Corners, their families lived there, and ”... I hear some Syracuse people plan to build motels out by the lake. Means plenty of picture work for you. I figure you should make fifty dollars a week at least.”

She talked Martin into staying in Bay Corners and he remained there—for three months. The day they were to buy a house, he took a bus to New York City. Mary Pearson never knew what happened to him till seven years later when reporters swooped down on her with Martin's picture on the front page.

Pearson spent a restless year in New York, working in a photography studio. New York wasn't what he was looking for. He decided to study color photography under the G.I. Bill and while looking into the various schools, he overheard some ex-G.I.'s talking about Paris schools.

In June, 1947, he got passage on a clean little freighter and sweated out a hot summer in Paris, living frugally and taking it easy as he brushed up on his French, hunted for an apartment. In September he enrolled in a photography school, but there wasn't much they could teach him. When he said he was interested in motion-picture work, his teacher introduced him to Theresa Veyron, a film editor.

No man had ever called Therese pretty. She was tall and slim, flat-chested, and had heavy ankles. Her long, lean face contained sad eyes, an overlarge mouth, and was set off by carefully brushed brown hair that hung to thin shoulders. The only child of a middle-class family, when she was twenty-two —and with the help of a dowry—Theresa married a fifty-two-year-old man who managed a movie theater on l'avenue des Ternes. He openly spent her dowry on his mistress, made a point of remarking about every large-breasted woman they saw on the streets. They politely hated each other and for lack of something to do, Theresa took a job as a secretary with a concern that made short advertising movies. At the start of the war Theresa was a film cutter.

Therese never considered leaving her husband but the war broke the pattern of most lives: for her it killed her husband, wiped out her family and home during an air raid, and left her mildly active working on underground movies that were never made, and lonely. With the war over she returned to the film business. There were plenty of jobs but no money, and although she worked hard she was always hungry and seedy looking.

Therese resigned herself to the fact that she was unattractive, that romance was out. Americans annoyed her and she only agreed to go out with Martin because it meant a good supper. He took her to a modest restaurant and she stuffed herself as he talked about photography. Over coffee and hot rums he carefully listened to her ideas about movies. And when he walked Therese to her three-room flat, he politely asked if he could sleep with her. She wasn't certain whether she was angry, amused, flattered, or astonished.

They turned out to be ideal lovers; each not only aroused a sincere passion in the other, but each of them was fanatically interested in the same subject—motion pictures. As soon as Therese could evict a girl roomer, Martin moved in. He made no secret of his money and they decided he would continue with school—to get the subsistence money—and in time they would open a small studio, produce the clever two-minute commercial used in French theaters between the showings of the regular feature.

Pearson had about seven thousand dollars left and they carefully hoarded this, living with moderate ease on his G.I. school money. They moved on the fringe of the movie crowd at Joinville, spent their spare time hunting for a studio, looking at equipment—and buying nothing but a cheap 16mm movie camera Martin used for practice.

Life was leisurely; they were sure of each other and their future: they were very happy. Pearson was one of the few Fortunate Americans who wasn't searching for the Left Bank of the 1920's in post-World War II Paris. Martin loved the Paris he found. It made no difference to him if he ate in a swank tourist restaurant or had supper in one of the student places for eighty francs. He wanted nothing more out of life than to sip coffee and eat croissants in a cafe each morning, racing through the Paris Herald in a few seconds, then slowly stumbling through a French morning paper over his second cup. He would play the pinball machine and finally go to school. In the afternoons he roamed the city, taking pictures of the people, the wonderful old dirty buildings. He was amused by the tourists and never lonely for the States. In fact during the five years he spent in Paris he claims he only went to the American Express once. At five in the afternoon he would sit at a sidewalk cafe and exchange small talk with the waiters as he waited for Therese to have an aperitif with him. He enjoyed watching her in the crowds, the eager impatient way she walked, as if there was absolutely nothing in the world as important as rushing to meet and kiss Martin Pearson.

One October evening in 1951, as they were having a late snack of mussels and snails in a cheap restaurant on rue Clichy, Therese asked/'You remember Gabby, the little one who thinks she is an actress because she has a bosom like a cow?”

Martin nodded.

“She is now living with one of your compatriots, a smug, stupid man who claims he was an actor in Hollywood and on Broadway. He is as bald as an egg, and I think you should see him.”

“Why? I can't grow hair!”

“My darling, always you must joke! He has just come from your army in Germany. He has a car and spends his money like a fool. But Gabby swears she has seen three reels of Nazi newsreels he has managed to steal, films never seen before. She says there are pictures of Hitler, Eva Braun, and others, including a parade of nude girls on floats, and horror shots of the beasts looting a Polish village. This... actor has ideas of making a full-length picture around these reels. It can be done, so I have arranged for Gabby to introduce you to this Monsieur Sam Lund.”

CHAPTER 3

AT SEVEN-THIRTY Ruthie got me half awake by the usual method of tickling my toes, then banging me on the head, which always brought me completely around. At first I'd thought this was cute, now I couldn't break her of the habit. I went to the bathroom, wearing only a pair of shorts. There was a short scream—I'd forgotten about the baby sitter. May was a skinny fifteen and wearing an old robe of her mother's that went around her several times. Her pimply face was a furious blushing red. I said, “What you screaming about? Haven't you ever been to the beach, seen men in trunks? Want the bathroom first?”

“I have already completed my toilet,” she announced, so I went in and left her to her blushing.

After breakfast I drove Ruthie to the nursery school. I only had a few hours' sleep and maybe some private eyes can bat along on no shut-eye, but not me. I needed sleep to sharpen my alleged mind, so I went home and crawled back between the sheets, after setting the alarm for noon. Exactly twenty-three minutes later the phone rang, jarring me awake.

Jake Winston said, “Hello, cousin.”

“Hello, Jake,” I said, trying not to sound angry.

“Waited till you were awake to call you,” he said pleasantly. “I saw Ruthie yesterday.”

“She told me.”

“Why didn't you call me last night? You know Grace, always fussing with her cooking. Wants to know if you're coming out Sunday?”

“Well... eh ...”

“Been months since we've seen you. The boys want to see Ruthie and Grace will make some fancy dishes I can't even pronounce.”

Grace was Syrian and could cook Oriental dishes that made you stuff yourself like a pig. “Don't have to sell me, Jake. Thing is I'm on a case and not sure I'll be free Sunday.”

“Let's settle it that you're coming out. If you get stuck, I'll drive in and pick up Ruthie. A deal, chum?”

“I'm buying. How's the mail?”

“Heavy, lot of damn magazines today. See you, Barney.”

I drove over to the office to pick up my mail—a waste of time, stopped at the coffeepot for a second breakfast and a couple of Alma's old dirty jokes, then headed down to the Andersun home. All the time I felt in a daze, my brain still working on Betsy Turner. There was something sad about her. All that stuff about her late husband getting his kicks out of beating men—I didn't believe it, but I guess anything is possible when a joker goes in for thrills.

I only expected to find Mrs. Andersun home, but the father was there too. Their apartment was much like mine, a four-room walk-up in a house that was on the verge of becoming a tenement. The Andersuns were ordinary-looking people, both in their fifties—Mrs. Andersun a very pale and delicate-looking woman. Her husband wore a torn undershirt, old pants, slippers, and a hearing aid. He was stooped and thin, a plump face held up by a scrawny neck, his skin an unhealthy pale-white.

When I told them what I wanted, he told me in a tired voice, “We have been through this so many times, so many questions.”

I gave him the old reliable, “Only doing my job, Mr. Andersun. And you want us to find your son's killer, don't you?”

He shrugged bony shoulders. “Yes, I suppose I do want the killer captured. But that won't bring Franklin back to us. When he came out of the war alive, I was so happy, and now...”

“The war did it,” Mrs. Andersun said as I parked my king-size backside in a worn chair. “Took a quiet boy like my Franklin, had him ride the sky at three hundred miles an hour. He'd be in Topeka one morning, maybe here in New York the next, or in California for breakfast and going to a show in New Orleans that evening. Then they expect him to return to a normal, slow life.”

“Frank wasn't... eh... nervous or anything, was he?”

“No, sir, he was a bright boy, a student,” the mother said. “Took three years of college under the G.I. Bill. Studied business. Always said how with the right methods and a little cash, a person could make a fortune these days. Had so many schemes—all legitimate, of course.”

“What sort of schemes?”

“No sense going into that,” Mr. Andersun said. “Other detectives asked us the same thing. Franklin never got started, you need capital and we're poor people. He managed to save a few hundred dollars and played the market with that. At first he made a small profit, then he tried some wild stocks and lost it all. He went to the big concerns with some of his merchandising ideas, but they wouldn't even see him. Then he got a couple of jobs, thought he could work his way up. They beat him down, broke his spirit.”

“Nonsense, Franklin would have been a rich man some day. He had the spunk,” mama said.

Mr. Andersun shook his head. “No, he lost his drive. That's why he was going to take a trip with this money, instead of investing it.”

“Where was he going?”

“No place special, maybe Paris, he just wanted to travel.”

“Were you in favor of the trip?” I asked.

Mr. Andersun turned so that the hearing device hooked to his belt faced me. “Was I in favor of it? Oh, travel is a form of education. We hardly had any time to discuss it. Juanita, that's our daughter, she thought Franklin should spend it on new furniture. But far as Mom and I were concerned, the final decision would have been up to the boy.”

There wasn't anything at the Andersun home, and the cops had already questioned them for several days. The old man had worked for the gas company most of his life, was taking time off now to pull himself together. They had never heard of any Brown, never heard or saw Turner before, hadn't a single idea why their son was shot. Juanita worked as a telephone operator and would be home late in the afternoon. She had a steady boy friend named Irving Spear, who was a hackie. Mom Andersun said, “A very good boy, going to evening college. Of course there's a difference in religion, but they will work that out. Franklin wasn't engaged, but he saw a lot of Cissy Lewis— lives in the house next door.”

When I left them, I dropped in to see if Cissy was home. She was a silly-looking girl of about twenty-four, with curlers in her blond hair, and quite upset because I found her in a dirty housedress, cleaning up her folk's apartment. She talked in a shrill voice, said her folks ran a local vegetable store and made a point of telling me, “I never work there, of course. Wish I'd have known you was coming; I'd have got dressed. Lots of cops and men have questioned me. Gee, you sure look like a detective —so big and hard-boiled looking.”

When I managed to get a word in, she said, “I was engaged to Frank and my heart is broken. As I told the reporters, I was so shocked at the news of his death, I fainted. I really did.” She had one of these straight-up-and-down figures except for fleshy, quivering hips, and as she talked she walked around the living room, putting quite a movement into her hips.

“Frankie know any Brown?”

“You mean a colored man?”

“No, a red-haired man named Brown?”

“Not that I know of and I knew all his friends. We were going to get married soon as he got a better job. I'm a secretary— out of work, at the moment. I told Frank I was willing to work for a while, so we could get married now, but he wouldn't hear of it.”

“What about the trip he was going to take?”

The-heel-and-toe strut stopped. “That was the dumbest idea I ever heard of!” Cissy shrilled. “When I read about it in the papers, I couldn't wait to give him a piece of my mind. Of course I never did. Poppa belongs to a checker club and I had to close up the store that night. Are you going to ask me where I was at the time of the killing, like the other dicks did?”

“No.” I stood up. “Could have used that thousand dollars to get married,” I said for no reason, except to watch her get steamed.

“Exactly what I was going to tell him. After all, I'm twenty-three, sure time I got married. One thing, I'm glad I never gave in to Frank. You know.” This was followed by a giggle and a modest blush.

I thanked her and made for the door. She looked up at me, said, “My, you're a big big man. Married?”

“Six wives, honey. Good-by.”

I drove over to the taxi-garage Irving Spear hacked out of, waited around—dozing in my car—till three when he drove in. He was leanly built, about twenty-seven, and had a pigeon-toed walk. His face was small and heavy shell glasses made it look smaller, and his noggin was on the bald side. From the way he moved and acted, he was a tough joker who could handle himself. I asked him if he'd have a beer. We got a booth in a crummy ginmill and he looked at my card, said, “Even private operators getting into the act. I can't understand the murder, Frank didn't have an enemy in the world. He was the mousy type.”

“His folks said he was a pusher, business-tycoon type.”

Irv laughed. “Frank wanted that but didn't have the guts. Actually he was a moody kid, like an artist or a poet. And he wasn't too smart. Surprised he had guts enough to even talk about taking off for Europe. Trip like that might have made him.”

“Cissy Lewis, his girl, didn't go for the idea.”

“That dumb tomato—she wasn't his girl. The way it was, Frank started taking her out a few times because she was always around. Bet in time she would have hooked him, too, even though he wasn't serious about her. Just a kid we grew up with.”

“Frank ever know a girl named Betsy?” I asked, starting to describe Mrs. Turner, surprised at all the details I could recall.

“You're off base,” Irv said, cutting in. “Frank wasn't a guy that chased. He didn't even have the nerve to talk Cissy into the sheets. Frank still had to pay for it.”

“Where?”

He shook his head. “Now look, this gal is okay, I don't want to make no trouble for her. I never even told the real cops about her.”

“Why should I make trouble? All I'll do is ask her a few questions. This is a rugged case, never know what will help.”

“Okay, but I don't believe in knifing anybody. I'm strictly a live-and-let-live joker. Her name is Louise, you'll find her in the basement of a private house down the block—515.”

“Did you know this man named Brown?”

“Who's he?”

“Guy with red hair who was in the Grand Cafe several months ago, said he knew Andersun, they were kids together— Brown said he remembered the church burning down.”

Irv grinned. “Yeah, I remember that liar now. Never could figure what his angle was in bulling Frank. Had a guy with him who was giving me the bull treatment too. Handsome guy with wavy hair. Said his name was Smith, or Jones, something like that. He kept asking if I was related to a Spear he knew. Odd part was—and why I remember him—he said this Spear was an accountant; that's what I'm studying.”

“What else did he ask?”

“Buddy, this was months ago and only beer talk then. He just asked about my folks being related to this other Spear, where I was born. That's all. I never saw him again. In fact I'm not swearing he was with Brown. But it was the same night.”

“Did you see Brown in the bar the night of the murder?”

“Was he there? Like I told the other cops, I was in school that night. They checked. You people think Brown is the killer?”

“I don't think anything. Brown is merely a name that's come up twice. Going home? I'll drive you there. I want to see Juanita.”

Juanita Andersun was alone. Her folks had gone for a walk, or in her own words, “Told them to get the hell out and air off.” She was a wiry, sharp-faced young woman of about twenty-one, rather pretty, with clean thin features and eyes like twin judges. She dressed simply and smartly and looked like a pert college kid—till she opened her mouth, breathed acid. Looking me over, she said, “So you're the man-mountain the folks said was here. Come on in, if you can get through the door. Just crawled home from the job myself. Work is a bitch.”

I sat in the living room as she went into the bathroom and said through the wide open door, “Be with you in a moment, got to exercise my bladder.” When she came back she stood in the doorway, stripped to her bra and panties, watching my reaction as she showed one of those hard slender figures that never change much between the ages of fourteen and forty-four. She threw on a beach robe, pasted a cigarette to her lower lip, then kind of flung herself in a chair as she asked, “What's with your great big birdbrain, shamus?”

The “shamus” made me grin; the sale of detective stories must be sensational, and meeting Juanita was sure an experience —a lousy one. “Like to get your ideas on the killings, ask some questions. Ever see Turner, the detective, before?”

She gave me a shake of her poodle hair-do.

We split a moment of silence, then I asked, “What do you think of the killings?”

“What's there to think? Either the work of a maniac, or Frank walked into a fight. As I told the other dicks, my brother was not involved in anything—he didn't have the guts.”

“Meaning?”

“In basic English it means he's the one that went to college. Me, I had to work after two years of high school—Frankie was a boy and in this family a boy is a Golden Boy. When Frankie came out of the army he was full of ginger, the old pep. Said any person with a little sense and willing to gamble, could make a pile—only suckers stayed poor. I thought maybe it was a break for us that he did go to college. He'd come home, tell me about the business methods he was studying—all the learned and fancy names for the old con racket. Frank and I would split a bottle of beer and he'd tell me how this and that guy started on the road to folding dough by putting a few bucks on some stock, parlaying the deal. Give you an example—Frank told me about some Englishman who heard about surplus U.S. Army supplies on an island in the West Indies—Trinidad, I think. So this guy bought all the stuff from Uncle Sam by cable, then sold them to the government of the island—by another cable. Made himself three hundred thousand bucks in less than a day, and all at the cost of two cables. That's operating. Sort of deal Frankie was looking for. On a smaller scale, of course.”

“Was this Paris trip part of a would-be deal?”

Juanita gave me a full-lip sneer. “What deal? Frankie was all talk. If bull was electricity Frankie would have been a dynamo. Soon as he left school he dropped a few hundred in the stock market and that kayoed his spirit too. Part of the loss was my dough, but I didn't kick. Can't expect to win every bet. All his education, his books and big talk—Frankie ended up a stock clerk, another one of the beer hounds at the corner dump. Although I have to admit the kid finally came through, made good.” She smiled at the blank look on my face. “We're collecting his ten grand G.I. insurance policy. You watch Irv and me hustle my share of that into some real salting money!”

“Ever hear of a man named Brown? Brother ever mention him?”

“Never heard of him. Should I have?”

“Guess not. What about Cissy Lewis?”

The lippy sneer again. “That drip. Frankie sure was lucky escaping her. Jeez, you don't suspect her, do you?”

“Just asking questions. Any other girls in Franklin's life?”

“Franklin—what a handle! No other dames—Cissy was for dancing and holding hands in the movies. There's a pro down the street who was hauling Frankie's ashes.”

“Tell that to the cops?”

“They never asked me. All they wanted to know was what 7 was doing at the time of the shootings. In case you're thinking of asking me, I'll tell you... I was waiting right here, with the folks, to talk Frankie out of the trip junk when he came in. Any more questions?”

“Not for now,” I said, heading for the door.

Without getting up she ran her eyes over me, asked, “How did you escape being a TV wrestler—big as you are? Well, I trust I've been of some help.”

“You're a regular real live doll,” I said, walking out.

I had over a half hour before I was due to call for Ruthie. I walked down the street to 515. This was a three-story brownstone; only now rooming-house fire escapes spoiled whatever beauty it once had. I walked down two steps to the basement, pressed the bell button next to the iron-gate door. After a minute, a man opened the inner door, asked, “Yeah?”

He was wearing sharply pressed slacks, a white wool shirt, and an expensive nylon sport jacket. He was tall and slim, long black hair carefully combed away from a face that was handsome in a kind of sensitive way, or maybe it was all the almost feminine mouth. One thing for sure—he spent a lot of time in front of a mirror. “Louise in?”

“Louise who? Whatcha want?” There was an uneasy whine to his voice.

“Louise.”

“You a dick?”

I nodded and he opened the gate and I followed him into what had formerly been a dining room but was now a one-room apartment with a kitchenette behind a cheap screen. It was furnished in standard installment-plan furniture, including a new model TV set and a square Hollywood bed with a fancy red throw over it.

Louise stepped out of the bathroom, wearing a white robe, lot of lace on it. She was a chunky girl with solid breasts. She could have been in her late twenties, maybe older. Jet black hair flowed to her shoulders and framed her face. The face was exciting and would have looked even prettier without the heavy blackened eyelashes. She had a heavy lush mouth, painted a deep red. She looked sexy—a man would stare at her on the street, without knowing why he looked—at first. She glanced at greasy-hair, asked, “Cop?”

He nodded and I sat down without being asked. I didn't have to ask if she knew Turner—his picture was on her dresser in a cheap gold frame!

She asked weakly, “Pinch or shake-down?”

“Neither. I'm a private dick.”

A big change came over pretty-boy. He put his hand on his back pocket, actually snarled, “Get out!”

The pocket seemed too flat for a gun. A knife. I said, “Take it easy, I'm not here for money or trouble. Only doing my job to...”

“Get out!”

“A cop has been killed, the police are looking for a fall guy. You'd rather talk to the police, all right with me.”

“Ain't going to tell you again to scram!” the man said, advancing toward me. He took a switch blade out of his pocket, a knife carefully wrapped in a white silk handkerchief.

My insides got awfully chilly as I tried to say in a steady voice, “Use your head, the police get rough when one of their own is killed.”

“Cliff, put that cheese sticker away,” Louise said. “Put it back in your pocket.” She had a nice voice, soothing. “What you want, mister?”

“Ask some questions about him.” I motioned at Turner's picture with my hand. I didn't take my eyes off Cliff, who mumbled something about, “Comes barging in, like he was taking over.” But he pocketed the knife, backed to the wall and watched me.

“Private badge—how are you in on all this?”

“I'm working for Turner's wife.”

The tense lines in her face softened as she said, “What do you want to know?”

“Why didn't you go to the police when Turner was killed?”

“I have an alibi!” Cliff sort of screamed. “I can prove I...”

Louise said gently, “Baby, shut up.” Then she smiled at me, that wonderful sensuous big mouth. “Why should I go to the police? I don't like cops, and I didn't do anything wrong. Sure I knew Ed Turner. He was a pest.”

“He was an unbathed louse,” Cliff put in.

Louise asked me, “What's your name?”

I gave her and greasy-hair one of my cards, said, “Let me get a few things straight. Turner was in here just before he was killed. That's why he was parked in his car down the street.”

Louise nodded, looked around for a cigarette. I threw her my pack. She lit one and tossed the pack back to me, said over a cloud of smoke, “Here's the whole story: Cliff had me working a hotel, and Ed Turner was in on a raid. Whole thing was hushed up, a payoff. My Cliff has connections. But Turner got my address and the next thing we knew he was hanging around here, for free. He was a little nuts, I think.”

“He was a miserable bastard!” the pimp said.

“Cliff, let me do the talking. I never had no trouble with cops, Mr. Harris. The hotel had its own protection and around here I just have a few local regulars. I play it smart, never let business get so big I attract attention. With Turner, at first all he wanted was to be on the free list. All that man had on his mind was bed, like a vitamin rabbit. It went on like that for a couple of months. That's all. As you say, I suppose he was leaving here when the fireworks started in the street. I don't know a thing about that.”

“And Franklin Andersun?”

She chuckled. “A once-a-month customer, afraid to even nod to me on the street.” She made a face and crushed the cigarette. “Cliff, cigarette me.”

“Told you I was out.”

“Go around the corner and get me a pack.” She turned to me. “I can't smoke anything but mentholated ones.” She turned back to her pimp, said slowly, “Gowan, Cliff. It's okay.”

To my surprise Cliff slipped on a pork-pie hat and went out. When he was gone and we heard his steps on the sidewalk, Louise pulled a chair over beside mine, and she had an odd perfume or smell to her that my nose liked. She looked at my card, said, “I'm going to tell you all I know, so help me. But don't get Cliff in no trouble. In this racket a girl needs a man behind her and Cliff is tough, yet he's like a kid that needs a mother.”

“A kid with a big switch blade.”

“Sure, he's a mean kid at times. Know what we do? Sometimes when I knock off work, in the middle of the night, Cliff and I get into his MG and we race out to Long Island, or up through the mountains, going nowhere, but it feels fine to be tearing through the night knowing you're as good as anybody else, feeling like a big apple. Pretty hard in this world to feel like you're somebody. Anyway, Cliff is my personal business and I don't want to see him hurt. I used to hate Ed Turner's guts for his petty graft—a lousy free lay—but after a time I felt sorry for him. He needed mothering too. Trouble was, he fell in love with me. That was big trouble.”

She lit one of my cigarettes. I didn't know what to say, so I said, “I'm listening.”

“That's the truth. He drove me crazy. He loved me the way Cliff does. He wasn't jealous of any of my customers, they didn't count, but he didn't want Cliff around. Once he pulled a gun on Cliff and the poor guy had a nervous stomach for days. Believe me, it wasn't for me. Ed would have killed Cliff. I kept telling him I needed Cliff—hotel work is my main income—but Ed said he'd get me a better pad. But I didn't care for Ed like I do for Cliff, and anyway, his being a cop made me nervous—never know when a cop will throw you to the wolves. Ed began hanging around in his car outside this house, watching for Cliff. Got so I was afraid to go to the hotel some days, afraid he'd arrest Cliff, kill him. And in this business you can't hang up no days. They want you there when you're supposed to be there. That's the way it was on the night of the killings.”

“What way?”

“Ed was in his car outside, mad as a boil, waiting to see if Cliff came in. Tell you, Mr. Harris, I know lots about men, and with whores they love 'em so much they hate 'em. For a time Ed used to get a bang out of slapping me around, playing tough. Then he started taking my money—got a joy out of leaving me just enough to eat. And that got Cliff so mad he wanted to take a knife to Ed. But after a day or two, Ed would show up with a gift worth twice the dough he took. A diamond ring once, then a watch. I still have the watch, but the ring is in hock. I'll show you the pawn ticket if you want.”

“Not necessary. Tell me more about Turner.”

“Not much to tell. Sometimes he'd be here every day, then I might not see him for weeks.”

“When did you first meet him?”

“This has been going on for about... nine or ten months. He was so funny. Sometimes we'd go to bed and he wouldn't touch me. And at times he'd wake up in the middle of the night and start bawling, mostly about the deal he was giving his wife. Some guys enjoy two-timing their wife; with others, it tears them up. One afternoon he took sixty-two bucks I had and tore out of here to buy a modernistic lamp for his wife—brought it back to show me, as though I cared. It was some crappy palm-tree idea with an ebony trunk and lights where the coconuts should be, only it was all zigzag angles and funny looking. See, he thought he was hurting me, bringing the lamp back to show me, but I couldn't care less—except for the dough. Two nights later he was back with the diamond ring as a gift. Expensive, I got almost a hundred on it in hock.”

She stopped talking and I sat there, trying to think, knowing I had something, but not sure what it was. “What's Cliffs alibi?”

Louise put a hand on my knee, said firmly, “Don't start talking or thinking that. I'm leveling with you, Mr. Harris, and you promised me no trouble. You got an honest face, level with me. Don't tell the cops about Cliff.”

“You can't expect me to keep a thing like this quiet. Hell, Cliff has a motive, a ...”

“No, no, Mr. Harris. Believe me, Cliff didn't do it. He talks tough, but the sight of blood makes him sick. And he has a real alibi. Cliff is smart. Most pimps get sent away because they don't have no visible means of support. Cliff works as a waiter, from eight to midnight, in a downtown night club. He was working that night, honest he was, I checked myself. You can check too. You know what will happen, the cops will find his alibi holds, but in the meantime they'll work him over. And I'll be in a jam. I don't hurt nobody. I'm not a nuisance. I've never been sick. Only got in this racket because I was hungry. Now it's all I can do. If you...”

“But Cliff hated Turner, that's the missing motive. Probably shot Andersun by mistake, or maybe he was trying to talk Cliff out of killing.”

“No, no, don't think that. Not so,” she said in that low steady voice, her eyes on mine. “I trust you. I didn't have to tell you a thing. Cliff is a bunch of bluff, never cut or hurt anybody. Take him to a shooting gallery. I saw it out at Coney Island— being around guns makes him sick. The smell or something makes him vomit. Check his alibi. There was a wedding party that night and all the waiters were working. Believe me, if Cliff was the killer I'd be the first to blow the whistle on him, I'd run a million miles from here. If Cliff did it they'd throw the book at me for nothing. Cliff didn't do it, he couldn't have. I tell you because you look like a man who doesn't think I'm dirt, a freak, because I'm whoring. I can trust you.”

Her dark eyes kept staring into mine until I looked away, felt uncomfortable. “Okay. I believe you, but I can't promise I won't have to tell the cops.”

“If they would only check his alibi and leave us alone, I'd have gone to them myself, but you know what they'll do. Why must you tell them? Sure, Ed was here that night. He was here plenty of nights. But we have nothing to do with what he does, what happens, when he leaves.”

I was still looking away from her eyes. There was no doubt what the cops would do to Cliff—hell, he was the only one who even knew both victims. They'd have to sweat him. I looked into her warm, intensely sincere eyes and asked, “Where were you at the time of the shootings?”

She sat up straight as though I'd turned into a rattlesnake. “Me? Why, you lousy... Don't try to pin it on me!”

“I'm not pinning anything on you. Look, as far as we know Turner and Andersun were complete strangers. Now we have two people who knew them both—two links—maybe the only two we'll have. You claim Cliff has an alibi. What's yours?”

“I was right here. Why else would Ed be parked outside?”

“Louise, right outside of here is where the murders took place. Puts you at the scene of the crime, as they say. Unless you have a ...”

“I had a girl friend with me. Ed'd come busting in that night, fighting mad. He'd had some kind of scrap with his wife and was all set for trouble. Said if he ever saw Cliff again he'd pistol-whip him. I wasn't feeling too well that night anyway— as though I didn't have enough troubles, that was starting. So when Ed left, I got the jitters, called this girl and she kept me company till one, when Cliff came in.”

“What's her name and address?”

“Comes to an arrest, I'll give it, but she's in the business too and I don't want to bring the cops down on her. Mr. Harris, please swear you won't do anything to get Cliff hurt. This is a lonely racket. Every man you meet can't wait to leave you. When a Cliff comes along, even though I'm his meal ticket, or when an Ed comes by, despite all their nasty tricks, you want them around because they're about the only people stay around you. Promise me...”

“I can't promise anything. Ever know a red-haired joker named Brown? He's been in the Grand Cafe a couple of times, talked to Andersun once.”

“Never heard of him. I'm no two-bit hustler working a dump like the Grand. Please, Mr. Harris, with Cliff...”

I stood up. “Honey, I don't hurt people, if I can help it. Not even a Cliff. I have to beat it.”

“I like you, Mr. Harris, and that's no sales talk,” Louise said, walking me to the door.

“You're an exciting woman—in a lot of ways. I like talking to you.”

She gave me that big hot smile. “You're an all-right guy.”

“What's the name of the place where Cliff works? And what's his last name?”

The smile fled.

“You told me to check his alibi, didn't you?”

“The Pigalle on West Forty-third Street. Cliff Parker. Don't make me any trouble. Please!”

“One more thing—take Ed's picture out of here. Been in the papers and somebody might recognize it, get curious. And if it isn't violating any ethical rules—how was Ed Turner in bed?”

“Lousy—kid stuff. What makes you ask?”

“Never know what makes for a clue,” I said, as if I knew what I was talking about. “Maybe see you again, Louise.”

When I drove up to the school Ruthie was waiting, with another kid and her Mama, and the mother gave me that you-poor-noble-bastard smile as she said, “I thought I'd stay around with Ruth till you came. I know how hard it must be for you to come here from business.” This was followed by another sickly grin. I said thanks and Ruthie thanked her and rushed into the car and kissed me, whispered, “I didn't ask her to stay with me. I'm not afraid.”

“Of course not. Only a few minutes late,” I said, driving away.

“Where are we going for a ride—Yonkers or over in New Jersey, Daddy?”

“Downtown. Maybe we'll eat out. Like that?”

“Chinese food?”

“Okay.”

“I like that. You going to train tonight?”

“No, darling, have to go out.”

“Oh, Daddy, not May Weiss again?”

“Guess so. Daddy is on some case.”

I drove down to the Times Building but had to park seven blocks away. However Ruthie got a bang out of walking through the Times Square rush hour. We went downstairs to a back-issue newsstand and I bought a copy of the April eleventh paper. We drove up to One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street and Broadway to a small Chinese restaurant that astonishes people by serving real Chinese food. First Ruthie messed up the table trying to use chopsticks. Then she had learned a story about a family of bunnies in school, and kept telling it to me till bunnies, Cliff, Louise, and Ed Turner's gold-framed picture kept blurring my mind like a runaway movie film.

May Weiss's father had to give me a lot of talk, wanted to know if this was going to be another all-night job, because if it was... I assured him I'd be home before eleven. Then Ruthie got sore because it was Friday night and she usually stayed up and I read to her. It was seven o'clock as I walked to a drugstore, wondering how come the movie dicks never are troubled with reading to their kids at night, making supper... or even having kids.

Over some orange juice I read the back issue of the Times— the little publicity plant about Andersun winning the thousand dollars—an item a person would miss unless they read the paper thoroughly. Turning to the marriage announcements, I got a break—there were only seven of them. I got some change and worked the phone book. I squeezed into a booth and called the first one—said I was the manager of the Pigalle and a green fedora hat had been left and I wondered if it belonged to anybody in their wedding party on the night of April eleventh. It was crude but on the third call a Mr. Worth assured me nobody at his party lost a hat, certainly not a green fedora, and if anyone had, he would have gladly sued the Pigalle since we were thieves and had grossly overcharged him. He almost busted my eardrum when he hung up.

I dialed the manager of the Pigalle, told him, “I'm Paul Worth, uncle of the Worth boy. Remember me, I was the one at the wedding party who had quite a toot on, did all the singing?”

“I remember you, Mr. Worth,” the voice at the other end of the wire said, lying cautiously. “What can I do for you, sir?”

“Have a silly favor to ask. I have some pictures of the affair and I was just pasting them in our family album.”

“Yes?”

“Well, in one picture there's a waiter in the background. In years to come I want to tell the children—and I hope they'll have a flock of little ones—exactly who was at the wedding. I have the names of each person printed under the photo. The waiter is tall, might say handsome, mouth like a girl, and shiny dark hair that...”

“Name is Cliff Parker, Mr. Worth.”

“I'm very exact about these things. Spell that p-a-r-k-e-r?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you're sure that's the man, that he was waiting on us that night?”

“Yes sir, those lips belong to Cliff. And he's the only waiter we got with a full head of hair.”

I thanked him and hung up. It wasn't airtight, but it was better than coming out and asking the manager—in case Cliff had told him what to say. Of course I was certain Cliff hadn't done it—if he had Louise would never have had Ed's picture around, or talked. If she hadn't told me, there wasn't a thing to connect her with Turner.

Still, the smart and safe thing to do was tell the police. They could put enough men on Cliff to tail every person he saw, know every time he breathed... could be some of Cliff's pals had done it. Maybe Turner was shaking down other pimps? After all, my thinking Cliff wasn't guilty didn't mean a thing.

But telling the cops would mean giving Louise a hard time and... The case was making less and less sense—now I was shielding a pimp!

I got to Mrs. Turner's house at exactly eight o'clock, but I waited around for ten minutes—didn't want her to think I was running around like her office boy—then went up.

She was dressed up again, a blue semi-evening gown that showed off her strong shoulders, the rise of her breast. The vermouth bottle was still on the table, but her breath said she'd been sipping stronger stuff. But she wasn't crocked.

“Good evening, Barney. You're late.”

“That's right, Mrs. Turner.”

I sat down on the hassock and glanced around the room. The coconut tree lamp wasn't much—a long ebony stem that made an uneven curve up to thin gold leaves, and the tiny bulbs arranged to give indirect lighting—if the whole mess gave off any light.

She took her seat on the couch, lit a cigarette, pushed the cigarette box toward me, gave me the half-closed-eyes look, as she asked, “Any luck today?”

“Glad you said luck—that's what we'll need in this case, all the luck we can stumble upon, the...”

“Find out anything?”

I nodded. “But I'm not any closer to the big answers. Talked to the Andersun family—nothing there to go on. But I did come across something... a little something.”

She blew a good smoke ring which we both watched till it faded. As I lit a cigarette, she said, “Is this some sort of a game? What did you find out?”

“That maybe it is a game. Somebody has been holding out on me.”

“Who?”

“You, Mrs. Turner.”

Her cheeks turned a becoming pink, like a spreading drop of water color. “What am I supposed to say to that?”

“Anything you want,” I said. “You came to me and you weren't too much concerned about your husband's being dead, but only if it was suicide. Then you've been giving me a series of small lies. Like you only drink wine now and then, only you stink of whiskey at the moment. That you were so very very happy with your husband, that you two were so happy in the hay. Then last night you casually mentioned that you and Mr. Turner had a little spat, in fact, you two were not doing so well in bed, but you had this pip of an idea that it was all because he got his kicks out of third-degreeing people. These were small lies, didn't detour me much, but I want to know why you've been stringing me. Hell, I work for you.”

“Are you quite finished?” Her voice was pure ice and if her eyes were any sharper I would have been bleeding.

“I don't know. Am I, Mrs. Turner? You're paying me good money to find out the facts related to your husband's death. Yet, you've been giving me a bunko story from the start.”

“If this is some kind of a riddle, I wish you'd come to the point. I said Ed and I were very happy when we married, that being on the force changed him some, but we were still happy.”

I shrugged. “Okay, that's what you told me. I stumbled on something that will hurt, so if you want to skip it, go on playing...”

“What is it?”

“Mr. Turner has for many months been seeing a lady named Louise, a prostitute. The reason Mr. Turner was parked near the Grand Cafe on the night of the killings—he was jealous of one Cliff Parker, a pimp. This too seems to be a feud of several months' standing. Louise claims Mr. Turner was in her bed so often, he was something of a pest. End of report, Mrs. Turner.”

She sat up, as though pulled by her head. Her eyes got very large and bright and she gasped, “I see, I see... Ed with a... a ...” Then the tears came, a flood of them. She bawled hysterically, her whole body shaking.

I waited for a long second—I can't stand seeing people cry. I went over and sat beside her, tried to dry her face with my torn handkerchief. She fell against me, sobbing on my shirt. I held her and liked the solid feel of her, the softness of her hair against my chin. “Easy, Mrs. Turner, easy. It's over and crying won't help. From what Louise says, Ed was a little... nuts about sex. If you didn't make a go of it, it wasn't your fault. Sorry this is a shock, but I had to tell you, know if ...”

She looked up at me, a face full of fat tears. “Barney, you think it wasn't my fault.”

“'Fault' is probably the wrong word to use about something like this, but for whatever it's worth,” I said, “I'm sure it wasn't your fault.” In fact I was having a hard time holding my arms around her—in a casual manner. But I kept telling myself that would be the dumbest move I ever made.

She said through the tears, “Oh God, I was so happy when we were married. An end to the loneliness, the feeling of not being wanted. Marriage was so wonderful—at first—and then so awfully empty; and that hurt worse than being lonely.”

“Perhaps you expected too much from marriage. It's a relationship, not a snake oil,” I said, sounding like Dorothy Dix with whiskers.

“I only wanted a small share of happiness, but as time went on... you don't know what it was like, this always feeling guilty, that it must be my fault and going crazy wondering how and why. You've had a happy marriage, love...”

“Love is another magic word, a movie word.”

“Didn't you love your wife?”

“We never tried to label it, that's why we got along. You've seen Lieutenant Swan, always bucking his way through life. Vi—my wife—had a lot of that too. Big career woman. She and Al, scrambling and pushing to 'get someplace'—more would-be magic words. They looked down their noses at me for being a schnook. Me, I believe in taking it easy; you only live to die, so make it an interesting ride. When Vi and I understood what the other was like, we didn't try changing each other; we got along fine. Maybe that's love—getting along.”

“You never had any arguments?”

“Sure we did. Sometimes Vi would nag me and I suppose I wasn't any dilly to live with either. She'd call me lazy and I'd sneer at her stumbling over the fast buck. I even gave in and let Vi get me a job as a car dick with an insurance company. But the main thing was, we never tried to push each other around. When she called me a bum and I said she was a hustler, and when we could both laugh at that, we got married.”

She stopped crying, was quiet. I began to feel a bit stupid, just sitting there, holding her on my lap as if she was Ruthie getting over a nightmare. “Mrs. Turner, why don't you forget all this? You were married and it didn't jell. That's a common sickness—90 per cent of marriages are two people with hot pants who suddenly find themselves married, and don't know how to get along. Why don't you go home to your folks, for a while?”

“Home?” She seemed to spit out the word and I could feel her body become heavy and tense. “I never had a home. My father is a carpenter, a good one, like his father had been. But he had to be a 'professional' man, didn't have enough money for med school, ended up as a pharmacist. Mama's older sister inherited the one drugstore in this small town when her husband was killed in the First World War. So we moved into her house. Pop has been a clerk ever since and we've been 'guests.' Everything I did always brought a reminder from Mama, 'Now, Betsy, remember we're guests in Aunt Emma's house.' Only time I was ever spanked—and I've never forgotten it—was when Aunt Emma caught me digging in her rubber plants, told my mother I should be punished, and right in front of her, Mama spanked me.”

“But that's over too. You're not a kid any longer.”

“It isn't over. They still are 'guests' in Aunt Emma's house and Pop is still her underpaid clerk. My poor father could have made a good living as a carpenter, but he goes through life as a scrimping clerk. Whenever I needed a winter coat, Pop would do some carpentry on the side, make more in a few nights than he did all week in the drugstore.”

“Well, maybe he was happier as a drug clerk than as a carpenter,” I said, to say something.