The Body Lovers

Chapter 8

Four of them were in the office when I got there. Al Casey and Hy were at the desk and two old-timers from the morgue file, passing them from one to another, identifying the subjects and making terse comments on their background.

I threw my coat and hat on a chair, took one of the containers of coffee from the sack and looked over Hy's shoulder. "What have you got?"

Hy nudged Al. "Tell him about it."

He fanned out a dozen pictures in front of him. "Mitch Temple pulled out a lot of folders, but his prints were only on the edges, from where he thumbed through them. However, on the photos in two of the folders his prints were all over them, so he had taken a lot of time going through them."

"These?"

"Yeah. Sixty-eight of them in the 'General Political' classification. We have everything from the mayor's speech to a union parley. We tried the cross indexes and can't see what ties in. Everybody in the foreground of the shots is identified and so far we have over three hundred names with repeats on about half, all of whom are fairly prominent citizens."

"How many did the paper use?"

"About a third. They're stamped on the back with the dates."

"There's a common denominator there though, isn't there?"

Hy nodded. "Sure. We nailed that right away. All were taken in New York within the last year. Try to make something out of that."

I picked some of the photos from the pile on the end and scanned through them. Some I remembered having seen in the paper, others were parts of the general coverage given the occasions by one or more photographers. There were faces I knew, some I had just heard about and too many that were totally unknown.

Every so often somebody would spot a possible connection and it would be checked out with another index, but every time they'd draw a blank. There didn't seem to be any possibility of a connection between their activities and Mitch Temple's death. Nevertheless, the pictures made repeated rounds among all of us.

I grinned when I saw Dulcie McInnes at a charity function and another of her at a ball in a Park Avenue hotel dancing with an elderly foreign ambassador in a medal-decorated sash. Then I stopped looking at faces and concentrated on the names typed and pasted to the back of the sheets.

The only one whose name had come up before was Belar Ris. He was greeting a diplomatic representative from one of the iron curtain countries who was getting off an airplane and Belar Ris had the funny expression of a man who didn't particularly care about being photographed. He seemed to be tall and blocky, suggestive of physical power even tailor-made clothes couldn't conceal. His face didn't show any trace of national origin except that he was swarthy and his eyes had a shrewd cast to them. His out-stretched arm was bared to the cuff of his coat; his wrist and forearm thick. Belar Ris was a short-sleeved-shirt man, the kind who wanted no obstacles in the way of a power move.

Al saw me concentrating on the photo and asked, "Got something?"

I tossed the picture down. "Mitch had some column items on this one."

He looked at it carefully. "Who didn't? Belar Ris. He's a U.N. representative. There's another picture of him in tonight's paper raising hell at an Assembly meeting."

"Anything special on him?"

"No, but he's publicity-shy. There are a dozen like him at the U.N. now...the grabbers. He'll play both ends against the middle to keep things going back home. Anything to protect his interests. It's too bad the idiots appoint people like that to represent them."

"They have to." Al separated some of the shots in front of him and picked one out. "Here's another of Ris. It was right after that Middle East blow-up. The guy he's talking to was ousted the next week and killed in a coup."

One other person was in the picture, but the lighting didn't make his features too distinguishable. "Who's this?"

Al took the picture from me, scanned it and shook his head.

"Beats me. Probably in the background. He's not mentioned on the back."

"He looks familiar," I said.

"Could be. That's right outside the U.N. complex and he could be part of a diplomatic corps. It doesn't look like he's standing with Ris."

He was right. The guy wasn't with Ris or the other one, but it didn't look as if he were going anywhere either. He seemed to be in an attitude of waiting, but even then, with a stop-action shot, you couldn't tell. There was something vaguely familiar about him, a face you see once and couldn't forget because of the circumstances. I ran it through my mind quickly, trying to focus on possible areas of contact, but couldn't make a connection and put the picture back on the pile.

I spent another twenty minutes with them, then got up and wandered down the corridor to the morgue where old Biff was reading his paper. He waved and I said, "Mind if I take a look in your files?"

"Be my guest."

I went down the rows until I came to the "R's" and pulled out the drawer. There was a file on Belar Ris, with three indistinct photos that hadn't been used. There was the shadow of his hat, a hand apparently carelessly held in front of his face and a blur of motion that didn't quite make him recognizable. The ones he was with were identified, but I didn't make any of them. All of them seemed to have some prominence, to judge by their clothes, the attaché cases they carried or the general background. I closed the files and walked back to the desk.

Hy was standing there looking at me.

"Okay, Mike," he said, "you pulled something out."

"Belar Ris," I told him. "There's nothing in the files."

"Why him?"

"Nothing special. He was the only one I recognized that Mitch wrote about."

"Can it, Mike. There is something special. What?"

"The guy doesn't seem to like having his picture taken."

"A lot of them are that way."

"Attached to a diplomatic staff? They're all publicity hounds."

"What do you know about Ris, Mike?"

"Only what Mitch wrote."

"Maybe I can tell you a little more. He's got a hush-hush background. Black-market activities, arms dealing, tricky business dealings, but I know a lot of others on top of the political situation that were just as bad. Right now he's being treated mighty carefully because guys like that can sway the balance of power in the U.N. Now look...there's something else about Ris, so don't you tell me ."

"There isn't anything, buddy. I was swinging wild."

Biff shoved the paper across the desk before Hy could answer me and said, "This the one you're talking about?"

It was Belar Ris on the front page, all right He was talking to two of our people and a French representative during a break in the session and his face was hard and one finger pointed aggressively at our man who looked pretty damn disgusted. The caption said it was a continuation of the argument over having admitted the government represented by Naku Em Abor, who had just proposed some resolution inimical to the western powers.

Hy said, "Does that look like a guy who doesn't want his picture taken?"

I had to admit that it didn't.

Biff grinned and said, "Don't fool yourself, Hy. Charlie Forbes took that shot and he doesn't work with a Graflex. Ten to one it was a gimmick camera hidden under his shirt."

I tapped Hy on the shoulder. "See what I mean?"

He handed the paper back. "Okay, Mike. I'll buy a little piece of it. We'll poke around. Now how about the rest of it?"

"The boys on the police beat have big ears."

"When it concerns you, yeah."

I gave him the story on finding Greta Service without mentioning all the details, simply that Dulcie McInnes had suggested checking Teddy Gates' files and I had come up with another address. He knew he wasn't getting the whole picture, but figured I was protecting a client's interest and since the job was done as far as Harry was concerned, it ended there.

When I left the building it was pretty late, but for what I wanted to do, the night was just starting.

The stable of girls Lorenzo Jones ran was a tired string operating out of run-down hotels and shoddy apartments. They all had minor arrest records, and after each one, simply changed the locality of their activities, picked up a new name and went back into the business. Like most of the girls who were on the tail end of the prostitution racket, they had no choice. Jones ran things with an iron fist and they didn't dispute his decisions. The operation was pretty well confined to the section catering to the waterfront trade, the quickies and drunks who patronized the dives where he made the contacts for his broads.

None of the first three I found had seen him and they seemed to be wandering around in a vacuum, not knowing whether to hit the streets or wait for Jones to arrange their appointments. Two of them had turned repeat tricks for old customers out of habit and one had solicited a couple of customers on her own because she was broke.

For some reason they were anxious to see Jones show up again, probably because on their own they'd get sluffed off if they tried to hustle, while Jones got the money in advance and the customer took what he was offered whether he liked it or not.

Talking wasn't part of their makeup. They had taken too many lumps from Jones and their customers over the years and there was no way to lean on them.

But the fourth one wasn't like that. Her name was Roberta Slade and she was the last one Jones had added to his firm. I found her in a place they called Billy's Cave sipping a martini and studying herself in the mirror over the back bar.

When I sat down her eyes caught mine in the glass and she said with a voice the gin had thickened just a little bit, "Move to the rear of the bus, mister."

She turned insolently and I could see that one time she had been a pretty girl. The makeup was heavy, her eyes tired, but there was still some sparkle in her hair and a little bit of determination in the set of her mouth. "Do I know you?"

I waved for a beer and pushed some money across the bar. "Nope."

"Well, I'm taking the day off." She turned back and twirled the glass in her hand.

"Good for you," I said.

I finished half the beer and put the glass down. "Shove off," she said softly.

I took twenty bucks out and laid it down between us. "Will that buy some conversation?"

A little grin split her lips and she glanced at me, her eyebrows raised. "You don't look like one of those nuts, mister. I've given a hundred different versions of my life history embellished with lurid details to guys who get their kicks that way and I can spot them a city block away."

"I'm not paying for that kind of talk."

Quickening interest showed in her face. "You a cop? Damn, you look like one, but any more you can't tell what a cop looks like. The vice squad runs college boys who look like babies; dames you take for schoolteachers turn out to be policewomen. It's rough."

"I'm a private cop, if you want to know."

"Oh boy," she laughed. "Big deal. Whose poor husband is going to get handed divorce papers for grabbing some outside stuff?" She laughed again and shook her head. "I don't know names, I'm lousy at remembering faces and all your twenty bucks could buy you would be a lot of crap, so beat it."

"I want Lorenzo Jones."

The glass stopped twirling in her fingers. She studied it a, moment, drained it and set it on the bar. "Why?" she asked without looking at me.

"I want to give him a friendly punch in the mouth."

"Somebody already did."

"Yeah, I know." I laid my hand palm down on the bar so she could see the cuts across my knuckles. "I want to do it again," I said.

Very slowly, her face turned so she was smiling up at me and her eyes had the look of a puppy that had found a friend and was trying his best not to run away. "So I have a champion."

"Not quite."

"But you laid him out, didn't you? Word gets around fast. You were the one who raised all that hell in Virginia's room, weren't you?"

"I was on a job."

Her grin turned into a chuckle and she motioned with a finger, for the bartender to fill her glass again. "I wish I could have seen it. That dirty bastard took me apart enough times. He hated my, guts, you know that? And do you knows why?"

"No."

"I used to work a hatcheck concession in a joint he hung out in. I wasn't like this then. He tried his best to make me and I brushed him off. He was a pig. You know how he gets his kicks?." He...well, hell, that's another story."

Her drink came and I paid for it. For a few seconds she, stirred the olive around with the toothpick absently, then tasted it, her eyes on herself in the back bar mirror. "I almost had it made. I was doing some high-class hustling, then I got a guy who liked me. Nice rich kid. Good education." She made a sour grimace and said, "Then Jones queered the deal. He got some pictures of me on a date and showed them to the kid. That was the end of that. I went to pieces, but he picked them up fast. He had me worked over a couple of times, picked up by the cops so I had a record, then he moved in and took over when I didn't have any place to go." Roberta took a long pull of the martini and added sadly, "I guess this is what I was cut out for anyway."

"Where's Jones now?"

"I hope the bastard's dead."

"He isn't."

She ran the fingers of one hand through her hair, then lightly down the side of her cheek. "The cops are looking for him too."

"I know."

"Why?"

"There are a couple of dead girls he might know something about."

"Not Lorenzo Jones. They can't make any money for him dead. He'd keep them alive."

I said, "He's just a lead. I want him, Roberta."

"What will you do to him if you find him?"

"Probably kick the crap out of him."

"Promise?"

I grinned at her. She wasn't kidding at all. "Promise," I said.

"Can I watch?"

"My pleasure."

She picked the drink up, looked at it a moment, then put it down unfinished. The twenty was still there, but she didn't touch it. "My treat," she told me.

The rain had slicked the pavement and was coming down in a fine drizzle, throwing a misty halo around the street lights. I wanted to call a cab, but Roberta said no and we walked two blocks without talking. Finally I said, "Where to?"

"My place." She didn't look at me.

"Lorenzo there?"

"No, but I am." She didn't say anything after that, crossing the avenues in silence, then down another two blocks until we came to the doorway between a pair of stores and she took my arm and nodded. "Here."

She put a key in the lock and pushed the door open, stepped in and let me follow her. I went up the stairs behind her, waited at the first landing while she opened up again and switched the light on. I had been in a lot of cribs before and they were usually dingy affairs, but she had taken a lot of trouble with this one. It was a three-room apartment, clean, furnished simply, but in good taste.

Roberta saw me take it in with a single sweep of my eyes and caught my initial reaction. "My early upbringing." She walked to the closet, reached deep into the shelf and came out with a cheap pad stuffed with papers and held together with a rubber band. She handed it to me and said, "He dropped it one night." It's a tally sheet on us, but you'll find receipts in there from a few places. We knew he had a place he stayed when he wasn't in with one of us, but nobody knew where. That is, until I found this one night. You'll find him there, but let me go find me first."

I looked at her, wondering what the hell she was talking about, and when she left, sat down and opened the pad. The kids had made plenty for Lorenzo Jones, all right, but I wasn't interested in his take. What I saw were paid bills from three different small hotels, each covering a period for about three months, and the last was dated only a month ago and if the pattern fit, he'd be there now. Only he wasn't listed as Lorenzo Jones. His name on the bill head was an imaginative J. Lorenzo, room 614 of the Midway Hotel.

Roberta Slade came back then. She wasn't the same one who had left and I saw what she meant about finding herself. She, smelled of the shower and some subtle perfume; the makeup was gone and the outfit she wore was almost sedate. She pulled on a maroon raincoat, stuffed her hair under a silly little hat and smiled gently. "There are times," she said, "when I hate myself and want to go back to what I think I could have been."

"I like you better this way."

She knew I meant it. There was an ironic tone in her voice. "It isn't very profitable."

"You could give it a try, kid."

"That depends on you. And Lorenzo Jones. He's got a long memory."

"Maybe we can shorten it up a little."

The Midway Hotel rented rooms by the hour or the day, and if you paid in advance, no luggage was required. The going rate for accommodations was steeper than the place deserved because the management got its cut for providing its service of keeping its mouth shut and overlooking the preponderance of Smiths in the register.

I signed in as Mr. and Mrs. Thompson from Toledo, Ohio, passed the money over and took the key marked 410. The clerk didn't even bother to look at my signature or thank me for letting him keep the change of my bill.

There was no bellhop, but this place had an early-model self-service elevator that took us to the fourth floor where we got out. We walked to the room and when I opened the door she gave me an odd look, a wry little smile, shrugged and walked in.

I grinned at her, but there wasn't any humor there. "No tricks, kid. I can't go busting in his door up there and he damn well won't open it for me."

"Nothing would surprise me any more. I'm sorry."

I went to the window, forced it up and looked out at the back of the building. Like most, it had an iron fire escape with landings that covered the windows of several rooms at each floor. I shucked my raincoat and threw it to Roberta. "Give me fifteen minutes to get up there, then come pay a visit."

"You won't start without me, will you?"

"No...I'll wait."

Outside, thunder rumbled across the sky and for a second there was a dull glow over the city. I stepped out to the iron slats and closed the window behind me. The rain waited for that second and came at me like a basket of spitting cats, daring me to go any further.

I swung my legs over the railing and got my feet set, hanging on to the metal bar behind me. The rain pelted my face and I couldn't be sure of the distance to the other fire escape frame. Then the sky lit up with that dull gray incandescence and I could see it, and while the image was still there, jumped, my fingers clawing for the iron rail.

My hands made it, but my feet slipped, smashing me into the uprights. I hung on, pulled myself up until I found a toehold, then climbed over and stood there to get my breath and see if anybody had heard the racket. There wasn't any need to worry; the rain kept the windows closed and the thunder drowned out any noise I thought I made. Two flights up where room 614 was, the window was outlined in yellow behind the drawn shade.

I took the .45 out of the sling, cocked it and started up the stairs.

The window was open about four inches from the bottom with the shade pulled below the level of the sill. Inside a radio was playing some tinny music and the smell of cigar smoke seeped out the opening. There was a cough, the creak of bedsprings and somebody twisted the dial of the radio savagely until another station was on. I tried the window. The damn thing was stuck fast.

Behind my back the wind came at me, driving the rain through my clothes, making the shade flop against the sill. I edged to one side, reached out with my fingers, got the shade, pulled it down on the roller and let it go. The thing snapped up under the tension of the spring and flapped wildly around its axis and the guy on the bed jumped up with a curse, startled, a snub-nosed gun in his hand. He took a look at the shade, let out another curse, stuck the gun in his waistband and came to the window, reaching up to pull down the blind.

And saw me standing there with the .45 aimed at his middle through the glass.

"Open it," I said.

For a moment I thought he was going to try it, but the odds were just too big and he knew it. His face was a pasty white, his hands shook going to the window, and when he forced it up he stood there with the sweat running down his forehead into a crease in his flattened nose and he couldn't get a sound out of his throat.

I stepped inside, yanked the gun out of his pants and smashed him across the jaw with it. His head snapped back and he stumbled against the bed just as a knock came on the door. I walked over, opened it and let Roberta in. She gave me a hurt look and said, "You promised."

"It was just a teaser, kid," I told her. "The main course comes up later."

Lorenzo Jones got his voice back. "Mister...look, I didn't do nothing...I..."

"Shut up." I locked the door behind me, went over and pulled down the window, closed the shade and, very deliberately, turned the volume of the radio up.

Lorenzo Jones got the message loud and clear. His eyes in their heavy pads of flesh grew a little wild. They didn't want to look at mine. They tried to appeal to Roberta, then he saw who she was. "Look, mister...if she paid you to do this, I'll pay you more. That bitch..."

"She didn't pay me, Lorenzo."

"Then why...?"

"Shut up and listen to me, Lorenzo. Listen real good because I'm only going to say it once. I'm going to ask you questions and if you don't answer them right, you're going to catch a slug someplace." I motioned to Roberta. "Get me a pillow."

She pulled one from the bed and tossed it to me. I wrapped it around the rod in my fist and walked over to Jones. He tried to swallow and couldn't. I said, "Who paid you to use Virginia Howell's room?"

"The...the girl. She..."

"Not the girl."

His nod was desperate. "It was, I'm telling you. She gimme the dough..." I leveled the .45 at his kneecap. "Cripes, don't shoot me, will ya! I'm telling ya, the girl gimme the money. Ali said she'd pay me...It wasn't the first time. He wanted a room somewhere for himself or his friends, I'd clear Virginia out and let 'im use it. Always whoever used the room would pay me. He..."

"Roberta?" I asked.

"He's pulled that plenty of times, usually with Virginia. A lot of those bums don't want to sign a register. A couple of times he stuck somebody up there who was hot."

I looked back to Jones again. "How long was Greta supposed to stay there, Lorenzo?"

His shrug was more like a big shudder. "I...dunno. Ali never told me. She got out on her own, then that stupid Virginia came back when I told her to stay away until I saw her. That's why I smacked her. She was givin' me a hard time. She didn't like nobody using her place. That other one messed up her clothes, threw them in a suitcase, knocked them down..."

"That other one was putting on an act for me, Lorenzo. She wanted me to think she lived there." I stopped a second, watched him and said, "Was she there before?"

"How do I know? I don't ask Ali no questions. Maybe she was. I ain't gonna complain when..."

I cut him off. "Who's Ali?"

"Hell, that's all I know. Just Ali He's a guy."

"You're getting close to hopping, Jones." I grinned at him and my mouth was a tight line across my teeth. I could feel my fingers starting to squeeze the gun.

Lorenzo Jones knew it too. His breath sucked in so hard he almost choked and he tried to double up in a ball. "Who's Ali?" I repeated.

His tongue ran over dry lips. "He's...on a ship. Some kind...of a steward."

"More."

"He brings things in. You know, he..."

"What does he smuggle, Jones?"

He couldn't keep his hands still and the sweat was dripping off his nose. "I...I think it's H. He don't tell me. His customers are...special. He ain't...in the rackets. He does it special."

"That puts him in the money class," I said.

Lorenzo jerked his head in a nod.

"How would he contact a slob like you?"

"I...got him some broads one time. He like to...well, he wasn't right. He did some crazy things to 'em, but he paid good."

"What things?"

Lorenzo Jones was almost babbling, but he said, "Cigarettes. He burned 'em, things like that. He'd...bite them. Once he..."

Roberta came up and stood beside me, looking at Jones with loathing. "I knew two of those kids. They never talked about it, but I saw the scars. One wound up in the mental ward at Bellevue and the other stepped in front of a subway train when I she was dead drunk."

"Describe him, Jones."

His mind didn't want to work. He couldn't keep his eyes off the pillow that covered the gun in my hand. I grinned again and it was too much for him. His mouth began to contort into words. "He...he's kind of not too big like. He talks funny. I tried to get something on him so I could maybe score with him but he's careful. I seen him in the Village sometimes. Him and a silly hat. He goes with them oddballs down there for kicks. Look, I don't know him. He's just some gook."

I got that feeling again, a surging of little streams running together to churn into a more powerful feeder that would eventually build to a raging torrent. How many people had called other people a gook? It was old army slang for any native help, the baggy-pants bunch that toted your barracks bags and did your washing. The kind who'd beg with one hand and kill with the other, to whom petty theft was a pastime, robbery a way of life and to be caught was kismet and your head on a pole outside the city.

"Okay, Lorenzo, now one more for the big go and don't muff it. You said you tried to get something so you could score on him. That means you tailed him. You know he comes off a ship." I paused, then said, "Which ship?" and held the gun on his gut.

He didn't hesitate at all. "The Pinella."

I nodded. "Why you holing up, Lorenzo?"

No words came out. His eyes seemed sunk in the back of his head.

I said, "Maybe you did find out something. Maybe you found out this man would kill you the first time you ever messed anything on him."

Jones got his voice back at last. "Okay, so I seen those broads. I know guys like him. He even told me. He..." His voice lost itself in the fear that was so alive it drenched him with sweat.

"Now, Roberta?" I asked.

"Now," she said.

I took my time with him and any little sounds he was able to make were drowned in the noise of the radio. He came apart in small splashes of blood and livid bruises he was going to wear a long, long time. I talked to him quietly while I did it and before his eyes were closed all the way I made him look at Roberta and see what he had done to her and when he couldn't see any more, made him remember what he had done to the others. I made sure he knew that this could only be the start of things for him because a lot of people were going to know who he was and what he did and wherever he went somebody else would be waiting for him and Lorenzo Jones knew I wasn't lying, not even a little bit.

When it was over I took his wallet, emptied out the three grand it held and handed it to Roberta. She could split it up with the others and they could get the hell away from the mess they were in if they had the guts to. At least I knew she would.

I stuck the snub-nose gun in my pocket, put the .45 back and went downstairs with Roberta. I tossed the room key on the desk and the clerk put it back on the hook without looking at me. The rain had settled into a steady downpour and I called a cab and put her in it.

She looked out the window, took my hand and said, "Thanks."

I winked at her.

"I don't even know your name," she said.

"It doesn't matter."

"No, it really doesn't, does it? But I won't forget you, big feller."