Twenty Plus Two

Chapter 8

Alder stood on the corner and looked down the cross street at the signs of the German Bierstuben and turner halls. They were tourist places. A man like Desmond Slocum would not be patronizing them. He started down Third Avenue, on the west side, north of 86th Street. There were three taverns in the block. He went into all of them, had two glasses of beer and studied the customers. All orderly, all normal.

He crossed the street, went into the single tavern in the middle of the block. Two tipsy sailors were singing with a man in civilian clothes, but the civilian was too young to be Desmond Slocum.

He crossed 86th Street, entered two taverns and without ordering anything looked around. He shook his head, continued to 85th Street, then worked back up the west side of the street. Three more taverns. In one was a bleary-eyed man of about sixty. He sat at the bar, his head propped up on his cupped hand, the elbow of which was resting on the bar.

“Your name Desmond Slocum?” Alder asked.

The man’s eyes blinked stupidly.

“Desmond Slocum?” Alder repeated.

“Don’t mind if I do,” mumbled the man.

The bartender came up

“You payin’ for it?” he asked Alder.

Alder put out a five-dollar bill. “Have one with us.”

The bartender shrugged, got a glass and a bottle and two glasses. He poured the whisky, reached to the backbar for a cigar. “I’ll smoke one, if you don’t mind.”

“It’s all right.” Alder shoved the change of the five dollars toward the bartender, then turned to the old boozer. “Drink up, Desmond.”

“Desmond?” asked the bartender.

“Sure, Desmond Slocum?”

“This rummy? Nah.”

“You know Desmond Slocum?”

The bartender grimaced. “The boss won’t let him come in any more, but I sure do know him. When he had it he spent it. A great man — in his time.”

“Know where he lives?”

“If you’re a bill collector,” said the bartender, “you’re working for the exercise. Slocum hasn’t had a piece of paper money in the Lord knows when. You’ll have one helluva time squeezing anything out of him.”

“I’m not going to squeeze him. He’s a friend of a friend, newspaper man I know in Los Angeles. Said Slocum taught him the business. Wanted me to look him up and say thanks.”

“Next block,” said the bartender. “The Wise Owl or the Third Avenue Grotto. More likely the Grotto. Heard he dirtied up the Owl awhile ago.”

The Grotto was between 85th and 84th Streets. The sour smell of stale beer caused Alder to grimace. There were eight or ten patrons in the place. Desmond Slocum sat at the near end of the bar.

He hadn’t shaved in two weeks. His shirt had not been washed in as long. He wore a hat that was well ventilated. He looked seventy, but was probably younger. He had the shakes and there was spittle, or spilled whisky, on his whiskered chin.

Alder took the stool next to Slocum.

“Mr. Slocum,” he said, “I’d like to buy you a drink.”

“G’way,” mumbled the old newspaper man. “I got a drink.”

“Have another.”

The rumpot turned his bleary eyes on Alder. “I don’t need no patronizing bastard to buy me a drink. Not today I don’t. I got me my four dollars from the blood bank and it’ll carry me through tonight. Look me up tomorrow and I’ll be glad to kiss your ass for the price of a drink. But not tonight, buster. G’wan, get lost.”

Alder spread out a twenty-dollar bill beside Slocum’s shaking hand. The broken-down newspaper man stared at it.

“I want to talk to you,” said Alder, “about the Doris Delaney case.”

“Oh, no, not again! I know, you’re one of them goddamn true detective story writers. All of you bastards got to write the Doris Delaney case. Ain’t there no goddamn sex murders no more? Hell, I’ll go out myself and kill a broad for you bastards. I’ll tear off her clothes and I’ll carve my initials on her.”

“I’m not a writer,” said Alder. “I’m not interested in sex murders or even plain murders. I’m interested in the Doris Delaney case, that’s all.”

“Why? What’s your angle? And don’t tell me there ain’t no angle. You wouldn’t be slipping me no twenty if there wasn’t.”

“I’m trying to find her.”

“Now I’ve heard everything! The cops couldn’t find her. The F.B.I. never even got a whiff of her. A hundred private eyes and lawyers spent a million bucks of old man Delaney’s money and now, twenty years after the spoor is colder’n Clancy’s balls, you come along and think you can find her — for a lousy twenty bucks!”

“Have a drink, Slocum.”

“Slocum? It was Mister Slocum a minute ago.”

“Mister Slocum.”

“Don’t you forget. Was a time the Police Commissioner called me Mister Slocum. Yeah, Delaney, too. ‘Mister Slocum,’ he says to me, ‘my daughter is not pregnant and if you so much as even hint such a thing I’ll sue you for libel and slander!’”

“I’ve read your articles,” Alder said. “There was no slightest suggestion of pregnancy.”

“I just told you, didn’t I? The old man had ten million bucks. That’s an awful lot of weight. The doe backed down on the identification.”

“Of Doris Delaney?”

“Who’re we talkin’ about? Judge Crater? I could tell you some things about that case.”

“I’m only interested in Doris Delaney.”

“Then stick to the subject. I’m wearing myself out talking. Felipe! The bottle! I got a pigeon, a twenty-dollar pigeon! Like I said, I visited every goddam pedia-pediatrician on the East Side and a few on the West. A hundred of ’em and I nailed him. Dr. Drucker. She’d been in and she was pregnant. ‘She’s a child — impossible!’ screams old Jonathan. ‘Not my baby!’ yells Mama. Baby! She was sixteen! There’re babies of fourteen have theirselves kids. You take these Dagoes and Polacks in the cold-water flats, they’re nursin’ one day, havin’ kids of their own the next. ‘But it’s impossible,’ howls Delaney. ‘she isn’t that kind of a girl!’ They’re all that kind of girl. That’s your mystery of Doris Delaney. Mystery — blah! Kid gets herself hooked. Afraid to face Papa. She does a Brodie.”

“Brodie?”

“Off the Brooklyn Bridge!”

Alder shook his head. “Her body was never found.”

“How do you know? What’s a corpse look like after it’s been in the water two weeks? You wouldn’t know your grandmother from a salted mackerel. They fish ’em out of the water every day. Sure, sure, I covered the case until it wore itself out. I wrote a million words on it. Hogwash. I could write as much on the love life of a guppy if I had enough booze to carry me over. For twenty bucks more, I’ll solve the Dorothy Arnold case for you, even if it was before my time.”

“This boy friend of Doris Delaney’s,” Alder prodded. “The one she dated?”

“Huh? Wasn’t any I know of. Guy made her pregnant, he’s the real mystery man.”

“Reference is made to the son of a business associate of Jonathan Delaney’s. She went out with his son on weekends.”

“Oh, the Gillis kid. Nothing. I checked him out. Dance parties — dansants, they called ’em. Gillis wasn’t interested in Doris Delaney. If she’d been a boy, yeah!”

“Drink up,” said Alder heavily.

“What the hell you want for twenty bucks?” snarled Desmond Slocum.

Alder walked to 86th Street and stepped into a taxi. He paid the tab at the hotel, got his key, and went up to his room on the eighteenth floor. The lights were on. A man sat in an easy chair facing the door.

It was the enormous man Alder had met the night before... at the El Toro Court in Hollywood. The man who had inquired for a Mr. Klinger. “You’re surprised, Mr. Alder!” the man said.