Death House Doll (12 page)

“I’ve had a hell of a day. You never saw such hands as I held. I don’t believe I had a count of ten or better all afternoon.”

My heart bled for her.

I climbed on until I could see into Emerson’s apartment. It could be I was kidding myself. It could be that Emerson had sold me out and I was walking into another booby trap. But I didn’t have any choice. He was my last chance. If he’d let me down, I was sunk.

It looked like a bachelor apartment, without any feminine frills. Books lined one entire wall. The furniture looked worn and comfortable. I muscled myself over the stone sill and into the room. It was exactly five minutes of ten.

“Hey, you. Counsellor,” I called softly.

No one answered. There was a newspaper on the floor beside an easy chair and an emptied high ball glass on an end table, but no one was in the room. I walked on into the next room, a bedroom. There was a soiled shirt on the bed and next to it, a clean one. The door to the bathroom was open. There was a damp rag on the bowl. Both Emerson’s shaving and tooth brushes had been used recently.

I lit a cigarette and leaned against the tile. Emerson had come home. He’d made himself a drink and glanced through the evening paper. He’d washed and shaved and started to change his shirt. Then what had happened?

I walked out into the bedroom again and down a short hall to the front foyer and I knew what had happened. Someone had rapped on his door or rung his bell and the cocky little lawyer had slipped on a light robe and gone to see who it was, thinking, probably, it was me.

My knees felt weak. I had to brace my back against the wall to stand. Emerson was still on my side. He’d gone down to Joliet. He’d found out what I wanted to know, but he wasn’t going to tell me. I was all on my own now. The little guy was lying on his back staring up at a ceiling that he couldn’t see.

He was through with being cocky. LaFanti or no one else was going to push him around any more. The little guy was finished with talking big. And he and I would have nothing to talk about.

Whoever had rung his bell or rapped on his door had shot him between the eyes.

I
climbed down
the way I’d climbed up. The man in the easy chair looked bored. His wife was still talking about the tough afternoon that she’d had at her club.

The rough bricks had rubbed my fingers raw. I licked the blood off them, as I stood with my back to the wall wondering what to do, wondering what I could do.

I could turn myself in. I wasn’t crazy. They couldn’t put me in an asylum. Almost any smart lawyer could make a monkey out of Gloria in court, prove that I hadn’t raped her. Even if I had, she wouldn’t have lost a thing she hadn’t lost a hundred times before. In time they would let me go. But by the time they did the little doll in the death house would be dead.

“Just think of me once in awhile,”
she’d told me.

I was thinking of her. Besides, I’d promised Johnny.

I knew now I was right. Emerson had been killed because he knew. But I had to have something for Corson, some tangible proof that would make him and Olson believe me. Olson would be a tough nut to crack. He had no doubt about Mona’s guilt. He’d said so in the newspaper.

I walked in the shadows to the front of the building and stood behind a big tree a few feet from one of the parked cars. There were four men in the car. I gathered from their conversation that two of them were Chicago detectives and two of them Evanston plainclothes men.

They didn’t think much of their assignment.

“Who thought up this stake-out?” one of them asked.

The man sitting next to him said, “State’s Attorney Olson. But this is silly. Duval won’t show here. By now he’s two hundred miles from Chicago.”

I was so close to the car I could have reached out and slit his throat with a short knife.

His partner agreed, “If he’s smart.”

A third man was noncommittal. “I dunno. If you ask me, Olson’s scared. You never can tell what a looney will do. Duval’s got some bug in his mind.”

“That’s for sure.”

“Else why would he make all those false charges against LaFanti? Corson was so disappointed he had to change his shorts.”

The four men in the car laughed.

“And why should he rape LaFanti’s girl friend?”

“Geez, who wouldn’t?” another one asked. “He really done it to her, huh?”

“Someone did. At least, so the medical examiner says.”

“But why shoot her?”

“That was accidental. She was trying to shoot him.”

One of them lighted a cigarette. “Yeah. I get what you mean about a bug. LaFanti knows more than he’s told about the Stein affair. Olson prosecuted the case. Emerson was the losing lawyer. It’s almost like Duval is out to get anyone who had anything to do with sending his brother’s wife to Joliet.”

“Could be,” the fourth man said. “Anyway, it’s cooler sitting here than in a squad room.”

I thought of the poor guy upstairs and hoped all the fat-assed bastards lost their jobs in the morning. If they had deployed themselves instead of bunching in a car, Emerson would still be alive. Whoever had killed him had walked in right under their noses.

I faded back into the shadows and moved on down the street. I had to know more about Mona’s background before I made any play. The apartment hotel in which she had lived was as good a starting point as any — if I could reach the hotel without being shot. As long as I was loose on the street, I was a walking clay pigeon for any cop with a yen for a commendation on his record.

It was almost midnight and six cabs later when I stood across the street from the hotel. The shabby street felt familiar. It was like I had traveled in a huge circle. I was back where I’d started from on my first morning in Chicago.

“Does Mrs. John Duval still live here?”
I’d asked the clerk.

“Why, no,”
he’d told me.
“She doesn’t. Where have you been, soldier? She’s been in the Joliet pen for six months. Only they call her Mona Ambler down there.”

And then the merry-go-round had started.

I sucked hard at my cigarette. Luck had been with me so far, perhaps because of the gray suit. Wear it in health, the guy had told me and I had.

The name of the hotel was the Rush Arms. It was an apartment hotel, with some transient trade. I stood across the street in the unlighted doorway of a beauty shop, looking toward the glass front doors. It had been the day man I’d talked to. From where I stood, the night man looked like an old fuddy-duddy who wouldn’t straight up from shooting. It could be I’d wasted my time and a lot of cab fare coming in from Evanston.

I straightened the collar of my coat, crossed the street and pushed through the swinging doors. There was no one in the lobby but the old clerk. Close up, he didn’t look like a fuddy-duddy. The cuffs of his shirt were frayed but his mind was all in one piece. In his day he had been quite a boy, an actor or con man perhaps. He had that look in his eyes as he glanced from my face to the bulge my gun made in my pocket.

He was almost cheerful about it. “Okay. So I’m stuck up again.” He opened the cash drawer, “It’s not my money. Besides, any small diversion is welcome when a man gets so goddam old all he can do is stand back of a desk listening to his arteries harden.”

I leaned on the desk. “Hold it, dad. You’ve got this a little wrong.”

He closed the drawer again. “Don’t tell me that’s a banana in your pocket.”

“No,” I said. “It’s a gun, but I don’t want to use it. I’d much prefer to buy my information.”

He made me then. “Well, I’ll be damned if it isn’t Ivanhoe, the second, the tough tech sergeant of infantry who is out to pry his brother’s widow out of the death house. Even if he has to pound on every hood and broad in Chicago.” I wished he wouldn’t talk so much. “That’s right,” he continued. “The last take on you I read said you were wearing a gray suit.” He lowered his voice and leaned across the desk. “What sort of information are you looking for, Duval? The name of some nice quiet place where you can hole up until the heat cools off a little?”

I shook my head at him. “No.”

The old man seemed disappointed.

I added, “It was nice of you to ask but how do you know I didn’t rape the dame?”

“In the name of God, how?” he asked me. “That apcray in the papers is strictly for the squares. Go ahead. You tell me. Just how would you ‘rape’ a dame who hustles at The Furnace? I would be interested to know. You see, Gloria used to bring her trade here before she crawled into Joe LaFanti’s bed. And a very nice business she did. I’ve rented her the same room eight times in one night.” He spread his hands on the hotel counter. “So what do you want of me?”

I laid two twenties and a ten between his hands. “For you. For the answer to three questions.”

He eyed the bills. “Go on. You interest me.”

“You worked here when Mona lived here?”

“I did. I was on duty the night they say she killed Stein.”

“Did she?”

“She was convicted. Is that one of the questions?”

“No.”

“Well, get on with it,” the old man said. “What do you want to know?”

“During the time Mona lived here, who was her best girl friend?”

The old man shook his head. “That’s hard to say. Girls turn over fast in the rackets, in more ways than one. She had quite a few friends. But during the last month Mona lived here, there was one in particular I remember. A mousy little dame she called Clara. She used to come over almost every night and sit with the baby.”

“A hustler?”

“No. Strictly on the level.”

I thought a moment. “No, can you tell me this? What beauty shop did Mona patronize?”

He shook his head. “There you have me, fellow. But there’s a place across the street run by a woman named Olga that quite a few of the girls who live here patronize. It could be she went there. And your third question?”

“Where did Mona come from? That is, where was she born? Where did she live before she came to Chicago?”

“That I can tell you,” he beamed. “Pierre, South Dakota. She got mail regularly from there up until about a month before the night she got involved with Stein. And I’ve heard her say several times she wished she’d had sense enough to stay there.” His hands hovered over the bills. “My money?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Your money. And now as soon as I walk out the door you call the cops and tell them I was here?”

He spat back of the desk. “Believe me. I wouldn’t tell a cop the right time of day.”

I believed him. The cops wouldn’t learn where I was from him.

The beauty shop across the street was closed and dark but there was a light in the living quarters behind the shop. Either a radio or a TV was playing. I rattled the knob, then rapped and a well-built, middle-aged woman with red hair answered my pounding on the door.

“Are you Olga?” I asked her.

Her breath smelled of beer and braunschweiger. She looked at me in the half-light, amused. “Yes. I’m Olga. But if you’re looking for what I think you are, someone has steered you wrong, mister. This isn’t that kind of a ‘shoppe.’ Why don’t you try the massage parlor in the next block or the hotel across the street?”

I said, “The hotel clerk across the street sent me here. All
I
want is some information.”

It wasn’t light enough in the doorway for her to see me clearly. She asked, “Who are you?”

“Let’s say I’m a friend of Mona Ambler.”

She stiffened at the name.

“You knew her?”

“Very well.”

“She patronized your shop?”

“For a number of years.” Olga went on record. “And whoever you are and whatever ax you’re grinding, I think the kid is getting a raw deal.”

“You don’t think she killed Stein?”

“Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. If she did it was his own fault. She made a sincere effort to go straight before LaFanti forced her back into the racket. I know she wanted out. And Stein had no right to tempt her by showing her one hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars’ worth of unset diamonds.”

It was a new angle. I couldn’t decide if it was in Mona’s favor or not. “You say she had her beauty work done here?”

“She did. Mona was a good customer. I could figure her for two manicures and a rinse and set every week and a new permanent every three months.”

“You worked on her yourself? You handled her hair, her face, her ears?”

“Of course.”

I asked what I’d come to ask.

Olga thought a moment. “Why, no. Come to think of it, they weren’t. She always wore clip earrings.”

I felt good. I felt fine. I’d never felt better in my life. I grinned. “I could kiss you.”

Olga shook her head. “I don’t get you, mister.”

I leaned against the jamb of the door. “Now, please tell me this if you can. Was Mona her right name?”

“No, and her last name wasn’t Ambler. It was Jones. She came from some town in South Dakota.”

“Pierre?”

“That’s the town. I remember we were talking one afternoon and Mona told me her right name was Mary Jones but when she came to Chicago and tried to break into show business, she decided Mary Jones didn’t sound glamorous enough. So she changed her name to Mona Ambler.”

I knew all I needed to know. “Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

Olga was puzzled. “Hey. What’s this all about? You say you’re a friend of Mona’s?”

“Yeah. She was my bother’s wife.”

“Your brother’s wife?” She took a lighter from the pocket of her dress and flicked it so she saw my face. “Then you must be Mike Duval, the crazy sergeant, who’s driving the cops nuts.”

I looked across the flame at her. “Do I look crazy to you?”

She studied my face for a long time. “No. You look like a good guy to me.” Her voice when she spoke again was harder than it had been. “This is more of Joe LaFanti’s work, huh? He’s pushing you around, just like he pushed Mona.”

“Let’s say he’s trying to.”

Olga put her hand on my arm. “Let’s hope he doesn’t succeed. You’re on the trail of something, something that may help Mona?”

“I think I am.”

“Do you need any money?”

“No.”

“Then, some place to lie low?”