The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction

SO DARK FOR APRIL Howard Browne

When I got through telling the sergeant at Central Homicide about it, he said to sit tight and not touch anything, that somebody would be right over. I told him I wouldn’t even breathe any more than was absolutely necessary and put back the receiver and went into the reception room to take another look at the body.

He was at the far end of the couch, slumped in a sitting position, with his chin on his chest and an arm hanging down. A wick of iron-gray hair made a curve against the waxen skin of a high forehead, his half-open eyes showed far too much white, and a trickle of dark blood had traced a crooked line below one corner of a slack-lipped mouth. His coat hung open, letting me see a circular red stain under the pocket of a soiled white shirt. From the center of the stain protruded the brown bone handle of a switchblade knife.

I moved over to lean against the window frame and light a cigarette. It was one of those foggy wet mornings we get early in April, with a chill wind off the lake and the sky as dull as a deodorant commercial. Umbrellas blossomed along the walks eight floors below and long lines of cars slithered past with a hooded look.

I stood there breathing smoke and staring at the dead man. He was nobody I had ever seen before. He wore a handsomely tailored suit coat of gray flannel, dirty brown gabardine slacks spattered with green paint and an oil stain across one knee, and brown bench-made shoes. His shirt was open at the throat, showing a fringe of dark hair, and he wasn’t wearing a tie.

The rummage-sale air of those slacks bothered me. This was no Skid Row fugitive. His nails had that cared-for look, his face, even in death, held a vague air of respectability, and they didn’t trim hair that way at barber college.

I bent down and turned back the left side of his coat. The edge of a black wallet showed in the inner pocket. That was where I stopped. This was cop business. Let the boys who were paid for it paw the corpse.

A black satin label winked up at me. I put my eyes close enough to read the stitched letters in it. A C G – in a kind of Old English script. The letters seemed too big to be simply a personal monogram, but then there’s no accounting for tastes.

I let the lapel drop back to the way I had found it. The dead man didn’t seem to care either way. Something glistened palely between the frayed cuffs and the tops of the custom-made shoes. I said, “Huh?” out loud and bent down to make sure.

No mistake. It made no sense but there it was. The pale white shine was naked flesh.

The dead man wasn’t wearing socks.

Detective Sergeant Lund said, “Right smack-dab through the old ticker. He never even had time to clear his throat. Not this guy.”

His curiously soft voice held a kind of grim respect. He straightened up and backed away a couple of steps and took off his hat and shook rainwater from it onto the carpet and stared thoughtfully at me out of gunmetal eyes.

I moved a shoulder and said nothing. At the wicker table across the room the two plainclothes men were unshipping tape measures and flash-bulbs and fingerprint kits. Rain tapped the glass behind me with icy fingers.

“Your turn, Pine,” Lund said in the same soft voice.

“He was like that when I came in,” I said promptly. I looked at my strapwatch. “Exactly thirty-two minutes ago.”

“How’d he get in here?”

“I usually leave the reception room unlocked, in case I have a client and the client cares to wait.”

One corner of his mouth moved up faintly. “Somebody sure wanted this guy to wait, hey?”

I shrugged. He took a turn along the room and back again, hands deep in the pockets of his topcoat. Abruptly he said. “It says on your door you’re a private dick. This a client?”

“No. I never saw him before.”

“What’s his name?”

“I don’t know.”

“No identification on him?”

“I didn’t look. The sergeant at Central said not to.”

He seemed mildly astonished. “A man dies in your office and you don’t even show a little healthy curiosity? Don’t be afraid of me, Pine. I haven’t chewed off anybody’s arm in over a week.”

“I obey the law,” I said mildly.

“Well, well,” he said. He grinned suddenly, and after a moment I grinned back. Mine was no phonier than his. He snapped a thumb lightly against the point of his narrow chin a time or two while thinking a secret thought, then turned back to the body.

He went through the pockets with the deft delicacy of a professional dip. The blood, the knife handle, the sightless eyes meant about half as much to him as last week’s laundry. When he straightened again there was a small neat pile of personal effects on one of the couch pillows and the dead man’s pockets were as empty as his eyes.

The wallet was on top. Lund speared it, flipped it open. The transparent identification panels were empty, as was the bill compartment. Shoved into the latter, however, were three or four cards. Lund looked them over slowly and carefully, his thick brows drawn into a lazy V above his long, pointed nose.

“Credit cards on a couple Loop hotels,” he said, almost to himself. “Plus one of these identification cards you get with a wallet. According to what it says here, this guy is Franklin Andrus, 5861 Winthrop Avenue. One business card. It calls him a sales representative for the Reliable Amusement Machine Corporation, Dayton, Ohio. No telephone shown and nobody listed to notify. Any of this mean anything to you, Mr Pine?”

“Sorry.”

“Uh-huh. You ain’t playing this too close, are you?”

“I’m not even in the game,” I said.

“Initials in his coat don’t agree with the name on these here cards. That must mean something, hey?”

I stared at the bridge of his nose. “His coat and somebody else’s cards. Or his cards and somebody else’s coat. Or neither. Or both.”

His mouth hardened. “You trying to kid me, mister?”

“I guess that would be pretty hard to do, Sergeant.”

He turned on his heel and went through the communicating door to my inner office, still carrying the wallet. He didn’t bother to shut it, and through the opening I could see him reach for the phone without sitting down and dial a number with quick hard stabs of a forefinger. What he said when he got his party was too low-voiced for me to catch.

Two minutes later, he was back. He scooped up the stuff from the couch and said, “Let’s talk, hey? Let’s us try out that nice private office of yours.”

I followed him in and drew up the Venetian blind and opened the window a crack to let out the smell of yesterday’s cigarettes. On the outer ledge four pigeons were organizing a bombing raid. Lund shoved the phone and ashtray aside, dumped his collection on the desk pad and snapped on the lamp. I sat down behind the desk and watched him pull up the customer’s chair across from me.

I got out my cigarettes. He took one, sniffed at it for no reason I knew of and struck a match for us both. He leaned back and hooked an arm over the chair back and put his dull gray eyes on me.

“Nice and cozy,” he said. “All the comforts. Too bad they’re not all like this.”

“I could turn on the radio,” I said. “Maybe get a little dance music.”

He grunted with mild amusement. All the narrow-eyed suspicion had been tucked out of sight. He drew on his cigarette and blew a long blue plume of smoke at the ceiling. Another minute and he’d have his shoes off.

He let his gaze drift about the dingy office, taking in the Varga calendar, the filing cases, the worn tan linoleum. He said, “The place could stand a little paint, hey?”

“You drumming up business for your day off?” I asked.

That got another grunt out of him. “You sound kind of on the excited side, Pine. Don’t be like that. You wouldn’t be the first private boy got a customer shot out from under him, so to speak.”

I felt my face burn. “He’s not a customer. I told you that.”

“I guess you did, at that,” he said calmly. “It don’t mean I have to believe it. Client getting pushed right in your own office don’t look so good, hey? What the newshounds call a bad press.”

I bit down on my teeth. “You just having fun, Sergeant, or does all this lead somewhere?”

“Why, we’re just talking,” he said mildly. “Just killing time, you might say, until the coroner shows up. That and looking over the rest of what the guy had on him.”

He stuck out an untidy finger and poked at the pile. Besides the wallet, there were several small square transparent envelopes, some loose change, a pocket comb, and a small pair of gold tweezers.

He brought his eyes up to stare coldly at me, his mellow mood gone as quickly as it had arrived. He said harshly, “Let’s lay off the clowning around, mister. You were working for him. I want to know doing what.”

“I wouldn’t bother to lie to you,” I said. “I never saw the guy before in my life, I never talked to him on the phone, or got a letter from him. Period.”

His sneer was a foot wide. “Jesus, you must think I’m green!”

“I’m not doing any thinking,” I said.

“I hope to tell you, you aren’t. Listen, I can book you, brother!”

“For what?”

“Obstructing justice, resisting an officer, indecent exposure. What the hell do you care? I’m saying I can book you!”

I didn’t say anything. Some of the angry color faded slowly from his high cheeks. Finally he sighed heavily and picked up the necktie and gave it a savage jerk between his square hands and threw it down again.

“Nuts,” he said pettishly. “I don’t want to fight with you. I’m trying to do a job. All I want is a little cooperation. This guy just don’t walk in here blind. You’re a private dick, or so your door says. Your job is people in trouble. I say it’s too damn big a coincidence him picking your office to get knocked off in. Go on, tell me I’m wrong.”

“I’m not saying you’re wrong,” I said. “I’m saying what I’ve already said. He’s a stranger to me. He could have come in here to get out of the wet or to sell me a slot machine or to just sit down and rest his arches. I admit he might have come here to hire me. It has happened, although not often enough. Maybe somebody didn’t want him spilling any touchy secrets to me, and fixed him so he couldn’t.”

“But you never saw him before?”

“You’re beginning to get the idea,” I said.

“Go ahead,” he said bitterly. “Crack wise. Get out the office bottle and toss off three inches of Scotch without a chaser and spit in my eye. That’s the way you private eyes do it on TV eight times a night.”

“I don’t have an office bottle,” I said.

The sound of the reception-room door opening and closing cut off what Lund was about to say. A short plump man went past the half-open door of the inner office, carrying a black bag. Lund got up without a word and went out there, leaving me where I sat.

Some time passed. Quite a lot of time. The murmur of voices from the next room went on and on. Flash bulbs made soundless explosions of light and a small vacuum cleaner whirred. I stayed where I was and burned a lot of tobacco and crossed my legs and dangled my foot and listened to the April rain and thought my thoughts.

Thoughts about a man who might still be alive if I hadn’t slept an hour later than usual. A man with mismatched clothing and no socks and an empty wallet. A man who would want to go on living, even in an age when living was complicated and not very rewarding. A man who had managed for fifty-odd years to hang on to the only life he’d ever be given to live before a switchblade knife and a strong hand combined to pinch it off.

I went on sitting. The rain went on falling. It was so dark for April.

After a while the corridor door opened to let in two men in white coats. They carried a long wicker basket between them. They passed my door without looking in. There was more indistinct murmuring, then a young voice said, “Easy with them legs, Eddie,” and the basket was taken out again. It was harder to carry the second time.

Sergeant Lund walked in, his face expressionless. He sat down heavily and lighted a cigarette and waved out the match and continued to hold it. He said, “Andrus died between eight-thirty and ten. The elevator man don’t recall bringing him up. What time did you get here?”

“Ten-thirty, about. Few minutes either way.”

“You wouldn’t happen to own a switchblade knife, hey?”

“With a brown bone handle?” I said.

He bent the used match and dropped it in the general vicinity of the ashtray. “Seven-inch blade,” he muttered. “Like a goddam bayonet.” He put the cigarette in a corner of his mouth and left it there. “This is a real cute killing, Pine. You notice how Andrus was dressed?”

“No socks,” I said.

“That isn’t the half of it, brother. New coat, old pants, fancy shoes. No hat and no topcoat. In weather like this? What’s the sense?”

I spread my hands. “By me, Sergeant.”

“You sure you wasn’t work—”

“Don’t say it!” I shouted.

The phone rang. A voice like a buzz-saw asked for Lund. He grunted into the mouthpiece, listened stolidly for nearly a full minute, then said, “Yeah,” twice and passed back the receiver. I replaced it and watched him drag himself out of the chair, his expression a study in angry frustration.

“I had Rogers Park send a squad over to that Winthrop Avenue address,” he growled. “Not only they don’t find no trace of a Franklin Andrus; they don’t even find the address! An empty lot, by God! All right. Hell with it. The lab boys will turn up something. Laundry marks, cuff dust, clothing labels. It’ll take ’em a day or two, but I can wait. The old routine takes time but it always works.”

“Almost always,” I said absently.

He glowered down across the desk at me. “One thing I hope, mister. I hope you been holding out on me and I find it out. That’s going to be jake with me.”

He gathered up the dead man’s possessions and stalked out. A little later one of the plainclothes men slipped in with his kit and took my fingerprints. He was nice about it, explaining they were only for elimination purposes.

By one o’clock I was back from having a sandwich and coffee at the corner drugstore. The reception room was empty, with only a couple of used flash bulbs, some smudges of fingerprint powder here and there and the smell of cheap cigars and damp cloth to remind me of my morning visitors. Without the dead man on it, the couch seemed larger than usual. There were no bloodstains. I looked to make sure.

I walked slowly into the other room and shucked off my trench coat. From the adjoining office came the faint whine of a dentist’s drill. A damp breeze crawled in at the window and rattled the cords on the blind. Cars hooted in the street below. Sounds that made the silence around me even more silent. And the rain went on and on.

I sat down behind the desk and emptied the ashtray into the waste-basket and wiped off the glass top. I put away the cloth and got out a cigarette and sat there turning it, unlighted, between a thumb and forefinger.

He had been a nice-looking man. Fifty-five at the most. A man with a problem on his mind. Let’s say he wakes up this morning and decides to take his problem to a private detective. So he gets out the classified book and looks under the right heading. There aren’t many, not even for a town the size of Chicago. The big agencies he passes up, maybe because he figures he’ll have to go through a handful of henna-haired secretaries before reaching the right guy. Then, not too far down the column, he comes across the name Paul Pine. A nice short name. Anybody can pronounce it.

So he takes a cab or a bus and comes on down. He hasn’t driven a car; no car keys and no license on him. The waiting room is unlocked but no alert gimlet-eyed private detective around. The detective is home in bed, like a man with a working wife. So this nice-looking man with a problem sits down to wait . . . and somebody walks in and sticks a quarter-pound of steel in him.

That was it. That explained everything. Everything but what his problem was and why he wasn’t wearing socks and why his wallet was empty and why his identification showed an address that didn’t exist.

I got up and took a couple of turns around the room. This was no skin off my shins. The boys from Homicide would have it all wrapped up in a day or so. The old routine Lund had called it. I didn’t owe that nice old man a thing. He hadn’t paid me a dime. No connection between us at all.

Except that he had come to me for help and got a mouthful of blood instead.

I sat down again and tried the phone book. No Franklin Andrus listed. No local branch of the Reliable Amusement Machine Corp. I shoved the book away and began to think about the articles that had come out of the dead man’s pockets. Gold tweezers, a pocket comb, five small transparent envelopes, seventy-three cents in change, a dark blue necktie. There had been a department store label on the tie – Marshall Field. I knew that because I had looked while Lund was out of the room. But Field’s has more neckties than Pabst has bottles. No help there.

Is that all, Pine, I thought to myself. End of the line? You mean you’re licked? A nice, clean-necked, broad-shouldered, late-sleeping detective like you?

I walked the floor some more. I went over to the window and leaned my forehead against its coolness. My breath misted the glass and I wrote my name in the mist with the end of my finger. That didn’t seem to help any. I went on thinking.

Maybe what hadn’t come out of his pockets was important. No keys, for instance. Not even to his apartment. Maybe he lived in a hotel. Not even cigarettes or a book of matches. Maybe he didn’t smoke. Not even a handkerchief. Maybe he didn’t have a cold.

I sat down again. There had been initials in his coat. A C G. No periods and stitched professionally in fancy letters against a square of black satin. Rather large, as I recalled. Too bad I hadn’t looked inside the pocket for the tailor’s label. Unless . . .

This time I used the classified book. T – for Tailors – Men’s. I ran through the columns to the G’s. There it was, bright and shining and filled with promise. A. Cullinham Grandfils, Custom Tailor. On Michigan Avenue, in the 600 block. Right in the center of the town’s swankiest shopping district.

I closed the window, climbed into my trench coat and hat and locked up. The smell of dime cigars still hung heavy in the outer office. Even the hall seemed full of it.

It was made to look like a Greek temple, if you didn’t look too close. It had a white limestone front and a narrow doorway with a circular hunk of stained glass above that. Off to one side was a single display window about the size of a visiting card. Behind the glass was a slanting pedestal covered with black velvet and on the velvet a small square of gray cloth that looked as though it might be of cheviot. Nothing else. No price tags, no suits, no firm name spelled out in severely stylized letters.

And probably no bargain basement.

I heaved back the heavy glass door and walked into a large room with soft dusty rose walls, a vaulted ceiling, moss green carpeting, and indirect lighting like a benediction. Scattered tastefully about were upholstered chairs and couches, blond in the wood and square in the lines. A few chrome ashstands, an end table or two, and at the far end a blond desk and a man sitting behind it.

The man stood up as I came in. He floated down the room toward me, a tall slender number in a cut-away coat, striped trousers and a gates-ajar collar. He looked like a high-class undertaker. He had a high reedy voice that said:

“Good afternoon, sir. May I be of service?”

“Are you the high priest?” I said.

His mouth fell open. “I beg your pardon?”

“Maybe I’m in the wrong place,” I said. “I’m looking for the tailor shop. No name outside but the number checks.”

His backbone got even stiffer although I hadn’t thought that possible. “This,” he said in a strangled voice, “is A. Cullinham Grandfils. Are you interested in a garment?”

“A what?”

“A garment.”

“You mean a suit?”

“Ah – yes, sir.”

“I’ve got a suit,” I said. I unbuttoned my coat and showed it to him. All he did was look pained.

“What I came by for,” I said, “was to get the address of a customer of yours. I’m not sure but I think his name’s Andrus – Franklin Andrus.”

He folded his arms and brought up a hand and turned his wrist delicately and rested his chin between his thumb and forefinger. “I’m afraid not. No. Sorry.”

“You don’t know the name?”

“I’m not referring to the name. What I am attempting to convey to you is that we do not give out information on our people.”

I said, “Oh,” and went on staring at him. He looked like the type you can bend easy. I dug out the old deputy sheriff’s star I carried for emergencies like this and showed it to him, keeping the lettering covered with the ball of my thumb. He jerked down his arms and backed away as though I’d pulled a gun on him.

“This is official,” I said in a tough-cop voice. “I’m not here to horse around. Do you cooperate or do we slap you with a subpoena?”

“You’ll have to discuss the matter with Mr Grandfils,” he squeaked. “I simply am not – I have no authority to – You’ll just have to—”

“Then trot him out, Curly. I don’t have all day.”

“Mr Grandfils is in his office. Come this way, please.”

We went along the room and through a glass door at the far end and along a short hall to another door: a solid panel of limed oak with the words A. Cullinham Grandfils, Private, on it in raised silver letters. The door was knocked on and a muffled voice came through and I was inside.

A little round man was perched in an enormous leather chair behind an acre of teakwood and glass. His head was as bald as a collection plate on Monday morning. A pair of heavy horn-rimmed glasses straddled a button nose above a tiny mouth and a chin like a ping-pong ball. He blinked owlishly at me and said, “What is it, Marvin?” in a voice so deep I jumped.

“This – ah – gentleman is the police, Mr Grandfils. He has demanded information I simply haven’t the right to—”

“That will be all, Marvin.”

I didn’t even hear him leave.

“I can’t stand that two-bit diplomat,” the little man said. “He makes the bottom of my foot itch.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Unfortunately he happens to be useful,” he went on. “The women gush at him and he gushes back. Good for business.”

“I thought you only sold men’s suits,” I said.

“Who do you think picks them out? Take off that coat and sit down. I don’t know your name.”

I told him my name and got rid of the trench coat and hat and drew up a teakwood chair trimmed in silver and sat on it. He made a quarter-turn in the big chair and his glasses flashed at me in the soft light.

“Police, eh?” he said suddenly. “Well, you’ve got the build for it. Where did you get that ridiculous suit?”

“This ridiculous suit set me back sixty-five bucks,” I said.

“It looks it. What are you after, sir?”

“The address of one of your customers.”

“I see. Why should I give it to you?”

“He was murdered. The address on his identification was incorrect.”

“Murdered!” His mouth dropped open, causing the glasses to slip down on his nose. “Good heavens! One of my people?”

“He was wearing one of your coats,” I said.

He passed a tremulous hand across the top of his head. All it smoothed down was scalp. “What was his name?”

“Andrus. Franklin Andrus.”

He shook his head immediately. “No, Mr Pine. None of my people has that name. You have made a mistake.”

“The coat fitted him,” I said doggedly. “He belonged in it. I might have the name wrong but not the coat. It was his coat.”

He picked a silver paper-knife from the silver trimmed tan desk blotter and rapped it lightly over and over against the knuckles of his left hand. “Perhaps you’re right,” he said. “My coats are made to fit. Describe this man to me.”

I gave the description, right down to the kidney-shaped freckle on the lobe of the left ear. Grandfils heard me out, thought over at length what I’d said, then shook his head slowly.

“In a general way,” he said, “I know of a dozen men like that who come to me. The minor touches you’ve given me are things I never noticed about any of them. I’m not a trained observer and you are. Isn’t there something else you can tell me about him? Something you’ve perhaps inadvertently overlooked?”

It hardly seemed likely but I thought back anyway. I said, “The rest of his clothing was a little unusual. That might mean something to you.”

“Try me.”

I described the clothing. By the time I was down to where the dead man hadn’t been wearing socks, Grandfils had lost interest. He said coldly, “The man was obviously some tramp. None of my people would be seen on the street in such condition. The coat was stolen and the man deserved what happened to him. Frayed slacks! Heavens!”

I said, “Not much in his pockets, but I might as well tell you that too. A dark blue necktie with a Marshall Field label, a pair of gold-plated tweezers, several transparent envelopes about the size of a postage stamp, a pocket comb and some change . . .”

My voice began to run down. A. Cullinham Grandfils had his mouth open again, but this time there was the light of recognition in his eyes. He said crisply, “The coat was a gray flannel, Mr Pine?”

“Yeah?”

“Carlton weave?”

“Hunh?”

“Never mind. You wouldn’t know that. Quite new?”

“I thought so.”

He bent across the desk to move a key on an intercom. “Harry,” he snapped into the box. “That gray flannel lounge suit we made for Amos Spain. Was it sent out?”

“A week already,” the box said promptly. “Maybe ten days, even. You want I should check exactly?”

“Never mind.” Grandfils flipped back the key and leaned into the leather chair and went on tapping his knuckles with the knife. “Those tweezers and envelopes did it, sir. He’s an enthusiastic stamp collector. Less than a month ago I saw him sitting in the outer room lifting stamps delicately with those tweezers and putting them in such envelopes while waiting for a fitting.”

“Amos Spain is his name?”

“It is.”

“He fits the description I gave?”

“Physically, exactly. But not the frayed slacks and dirty shirt. Amos Spain wouldn’t be found dead in such clothes.”

“You want to bet?”

“. . . Oh. Of course. I simply can’t understand it!”

“How about an address on Spain, Mr Grandfils?”

He dug a silver-trimmed leather notebook out of a desk drawer and looked inside. “8789 South Shore Drive. Apartment 3C. It doesn’t show a telephone, although I’m confident he has one.”

“Married?”

He dropped the book back in the drawer and closed it with his foot. “We don’t inquire into the private lives of our people, Mr Pine. It seems to me Mrs Spain is dead, although I may be wrong. I do know Amos Spain is reasonably wealthy and, I think, retired.”

I took down the address and got up and put on my coat and said, “Thanks for your help, Mr Grandfils.” He nodded and I opened the door. As I started out, he said:

“You really should do something about your suits, Mr Pine.”

I looked back at him sitting there like one of those old Michelin tire ads. “How much,” I said, “would you charge me for one?”

“I think we could do something quite nice for you at three hundred.”

“For that price,” I said, “I would expect two pairs of pants.”

His chin began to bob and he made a sound like roosters fighting. He was laughing. I closed the door in the middle of it and went on down the hall.

The address on South Shore Drive was a long low yellow-brick apartment building of three floors and an English basement. A few cars were parked along a wide sweep of concrete running past the several entrances, and I angled the Plymouth into an open spot almost directly across from 8789.

The rain got in a few licks at me before I could reach the door. Inside was a small neat foyer, complete with bright brass mail boxes and an inner door. The card on the box for 3C showed the name Amos Spain.

I pressed the right button and after a longish moment a woman’s voice came down the tube. “Yes?”

That jarred me a little. I hadn’t actually expected an answer. I said, “Mrs Spain?”

“This is Mrs Monroe,” the voice said. “Mr Spain’s daughter. Are you from the post office?”

“Afraid not. I’m an officer, Mrs Monroe. Want to talk to you.”

“An officer? Why, I don’t believe . . . What about?”

“Not from down here, Mrs Monroe. Ring the buzzer.”

“I’ll do no such thing! How do I know you’re a policeman? For all I know you could be a – a—”

“On a day like this? Don’t be silly.”

There was some silence and then the lock began to stutter. I went through and on up carpeted steps to the third floor. Halfway along a wide cheerful hallway was a partially open door and a woman in a flowered housecoat looking out at me.

She was under thirty but not very far under. She had wicked eyes. Her hair was reddish brown and there was a lot of it. Her skin was flawless, her cheekbones high, her mouth an insolent curve. She was long and slender in the legs, small in the waist, high in the breasts. She was dynamite.

I was being stared at in a coolly impersonal way. “A policeman you said. I’m fascinated. What is it you want?”

I said, “Do I get invited in or do we entertain the neighbors?”

Her eyes wavered and she bit her lip. She started to look back over her shoulder, thought better of it, then said, “Oh, very well. If you’ll be brief.”

She stepped back and I followed her across a tiny reception hall and on into an immense living room, with a dinette at one end and the open door to a kitchen beyond that. The living room was paneled, with beautiful leather chairs, a chesterfield, lamps with drum shades, a loaded pipe rack, a Governor Winthrop secretary, a fireplace with a gas log. Not neat, not even overly clean, but the right place for a man who puts comfort ahead of everything else.

I dropped my coat on a hassock and sat down on one of the leather chairs. Her lips hardened. “Don’t get too comfortable,” she said icily. “I was about to leave when you rang.”

“It’s a little chilly out for a housecoat,” I said.

Her jaw hardened. “Just who do you think you are, busting in here and making smart remarks? You say you’re a cop. As far as manners go, I believe it. Now I think I’d like to see some real proof.”

I shrugged. “No proof, Mrs Monroe. I said officer, not policeman. A private detective can be called an officer without stretching too far.”

“Private—” Her teeth snapped shut and she swallowed almost convulsively. Her face seemed a little pale now but I could have imagined that. “What do you want?” she almost whispered.

“Where’s Amos Spain?” I said.

“My . . . father?”

“Uh-huh.”

“. . . I don’t know. He went out early this morning.”

“He say where?”

“No.” Whatever had shocked her was passing. “Tom and I were still sleeping when he went out.”

“Tom?”

“My husband.”

“Where’s he?”

“Still asleep. We got in late. Why do you want to know where my father is?”

I said, “I think it would be a good idea if you sat down, Mrs Monroe. I’m afraid I’ve brought some bad news.”

She didn’t move. Her eyes went on watching me. They were a little wild now and not at all wicked. She wet her lips and said, “I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about. Bad news about what?”

“About your father. He’s dead, Mrs Monroe. Murdered.”

“I don’t believe it,” she said quickly. Almost too quickly.

“He’s been identified. Not much chance for a mistake.”

She turned away abruptly and walked stiffly over to a lamp table and took a cigarette from a green cloisonné box. Her hand holding the match wavered noticeably but nothing showed in her face. She blew out a long streamer of smoke and came back and perched carelessly on an arm of the couch across from me. The housecoat slipped open slightly, letting me see most of the inner curve of a freshly powdered thigh. I managed to keep from chewing a hole in the rug.

“There’s been some mistake, Mr Pine. Dad never had an enemy in the world. What do you suggest I do?”

I thought back to be sure. Then I was sure. I said, “The body’s probably at the morgue by this time and already autopsied. Might be a good idea to send your husband over. Save you from a pretty unpleasant job.”

“Of course. I’ll wake him right away and tell him about it. You’ve been very kind. I’m sorry if I was rude.”

She hit me with a smile that jarred my back teeth and stood up to let me know the interview was over and I could run along home now and dream about her thigh.

I slid off the chair and picked up my hat and coat. While putting them on I moved over to the row of windows and looked down into the courtyard. Nobody in sight. Not in this weather. Rain blurred the glass and formed widening puddles in thin brown grass that was beginning to turn green.

I turned and said, “I’ll be running along, Mrs Monroe,” and took four quick steps and reached for the bedroom door.

There was nothing wrong with her reflexes, I’ll say that for her. A silken rustle and the flash of flowered cloth and she was standing between me and the door. We stood there like that, breathing at each other, our faces inches apart. She was lovely and she smelled good and the housecoat was cut plenty low.

And her face was as hard as four anvils.

“I must have made a mistake,” I said. “I was looking for the hall door.”

“Only two doors,” she said between her teeth. “Two doors in the entire apartment. Not counting the bathroom. One that lets you out and one to the bedroom. And you picked the wrong one. Go on. Get out of here before I forget you’re not a cop.”

On my way out I left the inner door downstairs unlocked. In case.

The rain went on and on. I sat there listening to it and wondering if Noah had felt this way along about the thirty-ninth day. Smoke from my fourth cigarette eddied and swirled in the damp air through the no-draft vent.

The Plymouth was still parked across from 8789, and I was in it, knowing suddenly who had killed Amos Spain and why Spain had been wearing what he wore and why he wasn’t wearing what he hadn’t worn. It was knowledge built piece by piece on what I had seen and heard from the moment I walked in and found the body on the couch. It was the kind of knowledge you can get a conviction with – if you have that one key piece.

The key piece was what I didn’t have.

Now and then a car came into the wide driveway and stopped at one of the entrances to let somebody out or to pick somebody up. None of them was for the rat hole to which I was glued. A delivery truck dropped off a dinette set a couple of doors down and I couldn’t have cared less.

I lighted another cigarette and crossed my legs the other way and thought about hunting up a telephone and calling Lund and telling him to come out and get the knife artist and sweat that key piece out in the open. Only I didn’t want it that way. This was one I wanted to wrap up myself. It had been my office and my couch and almost my client, and I was the one the cops had tromped on. Not that the tromping had amounted to much. But even a small amount of police displeasure is not what you list under assets.

Another twenty minutes floated by. They would still be up there in that apartment wearing a path in the rug. Waiting, sweating blood, hanging on desperately, risking the chance that I had known more than I let on and was already out yelling for the cops.

I would have loved to know what they were waiting for.

When the break did come I almost missed it. An ancient Ford with a pleated front fender wheezed into the curb. A hatless young man in a rained-on gray uniform got out to look at the number over the entrance to 8789. He had a damp-looking cigarette pasted to one corner of his mouth and a white envelope in his left hand. The local post office dropping off a piece of registered mail.

And then I remembered Mrs Monroe’s first question.

I slapped open the glove compartment and got out my gun and shoved it under the band of my trousers while I was reaching for the door. I crossed the roadway at a gallop and barged into the foyer just as the messenger took a not too clean thumb off the button for 3C. I made a point of getting out my keys to keep him from thinking Willie Sutton was loose again.

He never even knew I was in town. He said, “Post office; registered letter,” into the tube and the buzzer was clattering before he had the last word out. He went through and on up the steps without a backward glance.

The door was off the latch, the way I had left it earlier. By the time the door to 3C opened, I was a few feet away staring vaguely at the closed door to 3B and trying to look like somebody’s cousin from Medicine Hat. The uniformed man said, “Amos Spain?” and a deeper voice said, “I’m Mr Spain,” and a signature was written and a long envelope changed hands.

Before the door could close I was over there. I said, “It’s me again.”

He was a narrow-chested number with a long sallow face, beady eyes, a thin nose that leaned slightly to starboard, and a chin that had given up the struggle. Hair like black moss covered a narrow head. This would be Tom Monroe, the husband.

Terror and anger and indecision were having a field day with his expression. His long neck jerked and his sagging jaw wobbled. He clutched the edge of the door, wanting to slam it but not quite daring to. The silence weighed a ton.

All this was lost on the messenger. He took back his pencil and went off down the hall, his only worry the number of hours until payday. I leaned a hand against the thin chest in front of me and pushed hard enough to get us both into the room. I shut the door with my heel, said, “I’ll take that,” and yanked the letter out of his paralyzed fingers. It had sealing wax along the flap and enough stamps pasted on the front to pay the national debt.

Across the room the girl in the flowered housecoat was reaching a hand under a couch pillow. I took several long steps and stiff-armed the small of her back and she sat down hard on the floor. I put my empty hand under the pillow and found a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson .32, all chambers filled and dark red nail polish on the sight. I held it loosely along my leg and said, “Well, here we are,” in a sprightly voice.

Monroe hadn’t moved. He stared at me sullenly, fear still flickering in his small nervous eyes. The girl climbed painfully to her feet, not looking at either of us, and dropped down on the edge of a leather chair and put her face in her hands.

The man’s restless eyes darted from me to the girl and back to me again. A pale tongue dabbed furtively at lips so narrow they hardly existed. He said hoarsely, “Just what the hell’s the bright idea busting in here and grabbing what don’t belong to you?”

I flapped the envelope loosely next to my ear. “You mean this? Not yours either, buster.”

“It belongs to my father-in-law. I simply signed for it.”

“Oh, knock it off,” I said wearily. “You went way out of your league on this caper, Tom. You should have known murder isn’t for grifters with simple minds.”

A sound that was half wail, half sob filtered through the girl’s fingers. The man said absently, “Shut up, Cora.” His eyes skittered over my face. “Murder? Who’s talking about murder? You the one who shoved in here a while ago and told Cora about Amos Spain?”

“I wasn’t telling her a thing,” I said. “She knew it long before. You told her.”

“You might like to try proving that,” he said.

“You bet,” I said. I put the gun on the couch arm and looked at the envelope. Yesterday’s postmark, mailed from New York City. Addressed in a spidery handwriting, with the return address reading: B. Jones, General Delivery, Radio City Station, New York, NY. I ripped open the flap and shook out the contents. A plain sheet of bond paper wrapped around three odd-looking stamps. One was circular with a pale rose background and black letters. The other two were square, one orange and one blue, with the same crude reproduction of Queen Victoria on both. All three wouldn’t have carried a postcard across the street.

Monroe was staring at the stamps and chewing his lip. He looked physically ill. The girl was watching me now, her fingers picking at the edge of the housecoat, her face white and drawn and filled with silent fury.

I said, “It would almost have to be stamps. I should have guessed as much two hours ago. How much are they worth?”

“How would I know?” Monroe said sulkily. “They weren’t sent to me. I never saw them before.”

I slid the stamps back into the envelope and put the envelope in my pocket. “You’d know, brother. If you’d kept a better eye on Amos Spain you might even have gotten away with the whole thing.”

“You’ve got nothing on us. Why don’t you just shove off?”

“I’ve got everything on you,” I said. “Not that I deserve any credit. The Army mule could have done the job. I can give you the State Attorney’s case right now.”

I picked up the gun and swung it lightly between a thumb and finger and sat on the couch arm. Rain beat against the windows in a muted murmur. From the kitchen came the lurch and whine of the refrigerator motor.

“Somebody named B. Jones,” I said, “gets hold of some rare stamps. Illegally. Jones knows there are collectors around who will buy stolen stamps. Amos Spain is such a collector. A deal is made by phone or letter and the stamps are mailed to Spain. In some way you two find out about it. After the stamps are in the mail, perhaps. No point in trying to get them away from Uncle Sam; but there’s another way. So the two of you show up here early this morning and force your way in on old Amos, who is still in bed. You tie him up a little, let’s say, and gag him, leave him on the bed and come out here in the living room to wait for the postman with the stamps.

“But Amos isn’t giving up. He gets loose, dresses and goes down the fire escape. He can’t be sure when you’re going to open the door and look in on him, so he puts on just enough clothes to keep from being pinched for indecent exposure. That’s why he wasn’t wearing socks, and why his clothes were mismatched.

“But by the time he’s going down the fire escape, you look in. No Amos, and the window is open. You look out, spot him running away without topcoat or hat, and out you go after him. Tackling him on the street wouldn’t do at all; your only hope is to nail him in some lonely spot and knock him off. How does it sound so far, neighbor?”

“Like a lot of words,” Monroe growled.

“Words,” I said, “are man’s best friend. They get you fed, married, buried. Shall I tell you some more about words?”

“Go to hell.”

I put down the gun and lit a cigarette and smiled. “Like I told you,” I said, “you’ve got a simple mind. But I was telling you a story. I wouldn’t want to stop now, so let’s get back to Amos. You see, Amos had a big problem at this stage of the game. He couldn’t go to the boys in blue and tell them about you and Cora, here. Doing that could bring out the business about the stamps and get him nailed for receiving stolen property. He had to get the two of you thrown out of his apartment before the envelope showed up.

“How to do it? Hire a strong-arm boy who won’t ask questions. Where do you find a strong-arm boy on a moment’s notice? The phone book’s got half a column of them. Private detectives. Not the big agencies; they might ask too many questions. But one of the smaller outfits might need the business bad enough to do it Amos’s way. At least it’s worth trying.

“So Amos gets my address out of the phone book, the nearest one to him, and comes up to hire me. He has no idea you’re following him which means he’s not too careful about keeping out in the open where nothing can happen to him. He comes up to my office and I’m not in yet. He sits down to wait. You walk in and leave a switch knife in him. But that’s only part of your job. You’ve got to fix it so there’ll be a delay in identifying him – enough of a delay, at least to keep the cops away from here until the mailman comes and goes. Lifting his papers may slow things down, but you want more than that. Being a crook, you make a habit of carrying around phony identification cards. You substitute these for his own, lift whatever cash Amos had on him, slip out quick and come back here. Right so far?”

The fear had gone out of Monroe’s eyes and there was the first faint sign of a smirk to his thin bloodless lips. He said airily, “If this is your idea of a way to kill a rainy afternoon, don’t let me stop you. Mind if I sit down?”

“I don’t care if you fall down,” I said. “There’s a little more and then we can all sit around and discuss the election until the cops arrive. A little more, like Cora knowing my name the first time I was here this afternoon. I hadn’t told her my name, you see; just that I was a private dick. But to Cora there was only one private detective – the one whose office you’d killed Amos Spain in.”

Behind me a quiet voice said, “Raise your hands.”

I froze. Cora Monroe’s .32 was on the couch arm, no more than six inches from my hand. I could have grabbed for it – and I could get buried for grabbing. I didn’t grab.

A slender stoop-shouldered man in his early forties came padding on stocking feet in front of me. He had bushy graying hair, a long intelligent face and a capable-looking hand containing a nickel-plated Banker’s Special revolver. The quiet voice belonged to him and he used it again, saying, “I won’t tell you again. Put up your hands.”

I put them up.

He went on pointing the gun at me while knocking the .32 off the couch with a single sweep of his other hand. It bounced along the carpet and hit the wall. He said gently, “I’ll take those stamps.”

“You will indeed,” I said. My tongue felt as stiff as Murphy, the night he fell off the streetcar. “I guess I should have looked in the bedroom after all. I guess I thought two people should be able to lift three little stamps.”

“The stamps, Mr Pine.” The voice wasn’t as gentle this time.

“Sure,” I said. I put my hand in my coat and took out the envelope. I did it nice and slow, showing him I was eager to please. I held it out as he reached for it and I slammed my shoe down on his stocking foot with every pound I could spare.

He screamed like a woman and the gun went off. Behind me a lamp base came apart. I threw a punch, hard, and the gray-haired man threw his hands one way and the gun the other and melted into the rug without a sound.

Monroe was crouched near the side wall, the girl’s .32 in his hand and madness in his eyes. While he was still bringing up the gun I jerked the Police Special from under the band of my trousers and fired.

He took a week to fall down. He put his hands together high on his chest and coughed a broken cough and took three wavering steps before he hit the floor with his face and died.

Cora Monroe hadn’t moved from the leather chair. She sat stiff as an ice floe off Greenland, her face blank with shock, her nails sunk in her palms. I felt a little sorry for her. I bent down and picked the envelope off the floor and shoved it deep into a side pocket. I said, “How much were they worth, Cora?”

Only the rain answered.

I found the telephone and said what had to be said. Then I came back and sat down to wait.

It was ten minutes before I heard the first wail of distant sirens.