Dressed to Killed (11 page)

He got the idea. Screaming that I should do an act which was physically impossible, he changed course and ran toward the other wall where the stacks were higher and the shadows deeper. I lunged after him, stalking the sound of his noisy shoes, herding him toward a corner.

He became quiet suddenly. I stood stock-still, listening to the sound of my own breathing and Ginny's spasmodic whimpering. As near as I could figure, he was in the far corner, separated from me by three huge stacks of piled cartons, probably taking off his shoes and waiting for me to betray my position so he could make a break down the other aisle. With a grim smile, I pushed the carton beside me. It felt solid. I reached for the edge of the first tier, and pulled myself up. Dust assailed my nostrils, but with the gun in my hand, I crept forward to the other side of the stack. I was rising to peer into the other aisle when, with a crash which reverberated against the low ceiling like nuclear fission, he announced that he was waiting and had a gun. The bullet ripped into a carton only inches to my left. I rolled instinctively and fell flat, cursing softly. The next instant there was a second crash as, unbalanced by my hasty movement, a stack of heavy cartons toppled into the aisle. I grunted and, with a bright idea forming, kicked at another stack. It teetered precariously for a moment, then spilled over on top of the others. When the aisle was choked, I slid down, the side nearest him and began scaling the stack still separating us.

He anticipated my strategy and tried to nullify it by sneaking down the aisle to my right. My ears caught the rustle of clothing against dry paper and I fired blindly at the aisle. He was yellow. He scampered back, not so quietly, and showed his desperation by wasting another bullet. I rolled toward the aisle and kicked at the corner cartons until they toppled in a crashing cascade. Immediately, I rolled back and put a bullet into the other aisle for luck. With an audible sob, he ran back and began to warm his fears with hot oaths. I kicked two more stacks into the left aisle.

He was hemmed in, now, with an obstacle course of tumbled cartons blocking each avenue of escape—and even a rat will fight when cornered. His hands and feet tore at the other side of the stack as he sought to scale it, wildly attempting to meet me head-on. I flattened myself and waited. A shadow darkened and moved. I fired at it. He cursed hoarsely and fell back pulling a column of cartons with him.

I scrambled toward him. He got to his feet, sobbing with frustration, and the entire heap of cartons quivered as he flung himself upon it, fighting his way up. I waited until it sounded as though he had nearly reached the top, then I dug my hands between two stacks and shoved toward him. They rocked and began to move away from me. I heard him curse and jump back—and then a short, terse cry of fear trembled on his lips. With a papery groan, the entire side of the pile toppled, shooting a choking cloud of dust toward the ceiling. I was blinded for a second. Then, choking and spitting dust from my parched lungs, I flung myself down upon him.

I GOT my hands under one of the cartons and attempted to lift it. It was damned heavy. With a grunt, I forced it away from his shoulder. He moaned and flung an arm toward me. With the butt of my gun, I tapped him smartly on the side of the head. He relaxed. I stood there, studying the situation. He was pinned down by four or five of the cartons, which would mean a lot of back-breaking lifting on my part, and getting him over the other piles in the aisles would be a feat for a weaker brain and a stronger back than mine. I decided to hell with him. I located his gun, pushed it into my other pocket, and began to climb out of there.

When I got to Ginny, she was kicking her legs and sobbing quietly. Sam, obviously, had departed this world. Mustache was lying on his side in a widening pool of blood. His eyes were those of a man whose hope has been gnawed away by inner panic. I stepped around him, avoiding the blood, and knelt beside Ginny.

She sensed a presence and began to whimper. "No, no, no—!"

"It's Rusty, honey. You're okay," I said softly. "I'll take care of you."

"No, no-!"

"Hush, honey, I'm going to take you home."

I untied her hands and lifted her drooping body away from the drum. She continued to cry and protest. Holding her gently against me, I smoothed the tangled blonde hair away from her face and kissed her lips. She stopped struggling and the sobbing became deeper and more normal. I stroked her forehead and whispered encouragingly to her between kisses. Her eyelids fluttered and began to slide open.

"You're okay," I kept saying, over and over. "You're okay, honey."

The words got through to her, finally, and, with a deep sigh, she murmured, "Thank God—!" and clung weakly to me.

"Try to stand up," I urged. "I know it hurts like hell, but see if you can't stand. Somehow, we've got to get out of here."

She tried. At first, her knees trembled and bent, but I could feel her forcing her muscles to obey, and her legs slowly straightened and remained rigid. I led her to one of the piles and leaned her against it. Then I took off my jacket and gently helped her into it. Her eyes glistened gratefully and her arms hugged the jacket about her.

I went to Mustache and grabbed him by the thin, sandy hair which covered his head like a moth's runway. "You're on the way to meet the Big Boy, kid," I said harshly. "You're dying. Understand? You're nearly dead. Who sent you here? Who put you up to it?"

His eyes rolled loosely and his lips slipped back in a sad smile.

"Gold?" I asked. "Was it Gold?"

The smile faded, as gently as autumn becoming winter, and his eyes drifted shut. I released him. Even in death the kid was a sucker.

"Come on, honey, let's get out of here." I put an arm around her and led her to the trapdoor. She stumbled and swayed, but I held her and steadied her until we were downstairs. The accomplishment seemed to give her more confidence and, while I got my shoes back on, I let her try a few steps by herself. She walked slowly forward, steadying herself by grasping the sides of the trucks we passed.

We were approaching the glass door of the office, when suddenly the silence was shattered by the peal of a telephone. The unexpected sound startled her, and, as though her bones had turned to rubber, she started to sink to the floor. I caught her and held her for a moment, giving her nerves a chance to stop trembling and her brain to take command again.

"It's the damned phone." I told her. "Buck up, kid, we're nearly out."

The phone kept pealing, as though the person at the other end knew we were there and was determined that we should answer.

I leaned on a desk and reached for the instrument. "Yeah?" I murmured.

A voice, strained and expressionless as though disguised, said: "I've been waiting."

I stared at Ginny. My tongue wet my lips. Again I said: "Yeah."

"Hasn't she talked?"

"No." I wet my lips a second time, and added: "Not yet."

"How much longer?"

There was something vaguely familiar about the voice, as if I had heard it a long time ago. I said carefully: "She isn't going to."

Quickly: "Why not?"

"Sam's dead."

"What?"

I could visualize lips drawing back in startlement and I could imagine a vague blur of a face behind the lips, but the face wouldn't sharpen. "Yeah," I said slowly, "Sam's dead."

"Who killed him?" It was a thoughtful, anxious voice now, impatient for details.

"Leo." I smiled a little. "Leo did."

"Leo killed Sam?" The whisper became incredulous. "Who is this?"

I took a deep breath and gently laid the receiver on its cradle. Ginny asked nervously: "Who was it?"

"The boss," I said.

"The boss? Who's the boss?"

"I wish I knew," I told her. "One thing is certain, though—it isn't Leo Gold."

"How do you know?"

Before I could answer, a hand began pounding feebly on the outside door. Ginny shrank against me. I smiled grimly and put my arm around her. The pounding became stronger. I squeezed her gently and said: "Because here comes Gold now. He probably thinks he got jack-rolled." I went to the door and growled: "Who's there?"

"Leo. Let me in!" His fist beat the door.

I jerked the door open and stepped back. As he plunged past me, I reached out and gave him a cut behind the ear. The blow, added to his own momentum, sent him sprawling. I caught Ginny's arm and pulled her toward the open door.

I had Gold's keys in my pocket and his Caddy was a hell of a lot more convenient than a streetcar or a taxi. I led Ginny to it and helped her in. She seemed strangely subdued. When we were headed east, I felt her watching me.

"What's on your mind?" I asked.

"Was that really Leo Gold?" she asked in a puzzled voice.

"Who, the guy I knocked in the head back there?"

"Yes."

"It was Gold, all right; a little tarnished, maybe, but still Gold. Ha, ha."

"But—how'd you know?"

"I've met him on a couple other occasions. In fact, I mugged him outside that garage and took his keys away from him."

"Gee, you're tough." A note of admiration came into her voice. "And you killed the other three, too, didn't you!"

"Just two of them. The one in the fancy sport shirt will probably get out. I should have set fire to the place and sent them straight to hell, where all four of them belong."

"Gosh, Rusty"—she squeezed my arm—"did you do that because... because of what they did to me?"

"That's part of it," I admitted. Then something in her tone struck me and I smiled down on her. "Hell, you're worth fighting for, aren't you?"

"No one ever killed anyone on my account before."

It wasn't diplomatic, but I said it anyway: "Someone killed Eddie."

"Not on my account. Honest."

"It wasn't on account of those DuMorell sets."

"It must have been! What else?"

"I don't know," I admitted, "but it seems to me they'd keep him alive till he would tell where the sets were. What's the excuse for killing him?"

"A quarter-million bucks is just an excuse?"

"It isn't a quarter-million bucks, honey," I said lightly. "The way Gold explained it to me and Eddie's wife, the whole lot isn't worth more than ten grand—and that's what he bid."

"Ten grand! Why, the cheap, chiseling—!"

"No, it makes sense. The quarter-million figure is list price. Dealers get forty percent off as a normal margin of profit. But the sets are hot, so a dealer's got to get a bigger bite than that, otherwise it isn't worth him taking the risk involved. Then the peddler's got to get a cut, Gold's got to get a percentage, and so on, up and down the line. By the time it's all cut up, there isn't a hell of a lot left."

"But—they had to be the reason, Rusty!"

"It doesn't figure. Gold is too smart to put himself in the middle for that kind of money—and I don't think Eddie would have either. Did Eddie ever talk about how he intended to liquidate these sets?"

"Sure. He was going to peddle them, like I told you."

We were nearing North Avenue and La Salle Street. Traffic was a little heavier and I eased up on the gas. "Eddie must have had somebody who could take the whole lot off his hands," I said thoughtfully, "otherwise he would have been selling them off a few at a time as this guy Libby smuggled them out. I wonder who the hell it could have been?"

"I don't know," she said sleepily, "but Eddie was going to get a lot more than ten grand for them.... And so are we, even if I have to take them out and peddle them door-to-door myself!"

"I can probably get a quick fifteen for them."

"How?"

"By making a deal with the insurance company." I explained how it worked.

"Well, that's better than ten!"

"On the other hand," I went on, "Norma Mae Sands offered me twenty, with an extra grand tossed in for love and kisses."

"Say, you've been getting around. But I wouldn't trust that Norma Mae. She has an angle or she wouldn't have offered a dime."

"You think Eddie did more talking to her than he did to you?"

Her head came to rest against my shoulder. "He told me where they are—and I'm sure he didn't tell her." She yawned. "Gee, I'll be glad to get to bed."

"How does your back feel?"

"Sore. Say, you've got the key I gave you, haven't you?"

"Sure."

"That's good." She sighed. "Those punks gave me such a rush act that I didn't even have time to grab my purse. God, I was never so glad to see anybody as I was when I opened my eyes and saw you, darling. I thought it was curtains for Ginny. Honest!"

"I'd have told them where the damned sets were."

"I would have, I think, if I'd known they weren't really worth a quarter-million," she admitted. "I kept saying it over and over to myself, like a broken record, you know, and I'd have died before I'd have let them tear that much money away from me. But fifteen to twenty grand.... Hell, I bet I've got that much ice under my mattress—and it isn't hot, either."

"The ice or the mattress?"

She laughed. I wasn't sure at what.

I made Gold a present of the guns by tucking them into the glove compartment of the Caddy, and ditched the car itself in front of Agostino's on Rush Street. We walked the last two blocks to Ginny's apartment. It was 3:37 in the a.m. when I unlocked the door and snapped on the lights. Five minutes later the lights were out.

And I slept on the couch....

I CLOSED my eyes and a fly settled on my nose. I shook my head and tried to roll away. The fly alighted on my lips. It was persistent. Groggily, I realized that it was too large, too warm, too moist to be a fly. It was taking my breath away, stifling me. I mumbled in protest and tried to turn away.

"Come on, sleepyhead," Ginny's voice crooned, "wake up!" With a frolicsome laugh, she kissed me again.

I opened my eyes. She was sitting on the edge of the couch, leaning over me. I noticed there was bright sunlight behind her, that her smiling lips were freshly rouged, that her blonde hair had been brushed into the up-do again, and that there seemed to be perfume all around me. I noticed, too, that she wore a satiny black dressing gown, which looked as though it would be sleek and sense-tickling under a man's hands.

I sighed, stretched my arms, and put them around her. I pulled her down against me, enjoying the sensualness of her soft weight on my chest and testing the willingness of her body.

"Time to get up," she whispered against my neck. "I'm making coffee."

"Good." I kissed her lazily, letting her warmth awaken me, and tightened my arms.

"Ouch."

The syllable, a murmured warning rather than a cry of pain, brought the night and Sam and Eddie Sands and the cops and Diane Doll and all the rest of my problems rushing back. I released her and sat up. "What time is it?"

"A little after ten. How do you like your eggs?"

"Over easy." I rubbed my chin. It felt like OC-grade sandpaper. "I suppose you've got a razor."

"It's in the bathroom. I've put soap and everything out for you. The suit you had on last night is a wreck, so I laid one of the others on the bed for you. All right?"

I thanked her and went into the bathroom.

By the time I got dressed, I was feeling pretty good. She had toast, eggs, and coffee ready when I strolled into the dinette. I ate hungrily.

"Are you always grumpy in the morning?" she asked, pouring me a second cup of coffee.

"I suppose. I seem to remember Giselle saying that you weren't all smiles when she got you out of bed yesterday morning."

"She's a girl." She smiled archly. "It makes a difference—"

"I've heard. What time did she wake you?"

"Gosh, I don't really know. It seemed like the middle of the night, but it was probably between eight and nine."

"How long was she here?"

"A minute or two. I had it ready, and I handed it to her and she left."

"It took you a while to give her the instructions, didn't it?"

Ginny looked blank. "What instructions? I gave her the money, like Eddie told me to, and that was it."

I set the coffee cup down slowly. "When Giselle came here early yesterday morning, you gave her Richmond's check for seven-and-a-half. And you told her to drive a Cadillac sedan to Kenosha for him and to leave it in front of his sister's home there." I paused. "Didn't you?"

"No!" She shook her head. "All I did was hand her Eddie's pay-off cash. She usually picked it up at the joint, but Eddie didn't want to leave it there this week, so he left word for her to stop by here and see me."

"Ginny." I swallowed. "What pay-off cash?"

"Are you kidding? The money every joint has to slip to the district captain in order to keep running. They do it each week, just like putting money in the bank, only they don't get it back. You mean you don't know what's going on?" She seemed amused.

"I know the joints pay off, of course, but I didn't know that Giselle had anything to do with it. How come she picked it up?"

"She picked it up from a lot of the joints."

"But how come?"

Ginny shrugged. "Gosh, I don't know. She started a couple years ago, I think—when they first started putting the heat on the girls in the district—and, as far as I know, she's been doing it ever since. I suppose she made a deal with the captain—or maybe he put pressure on her—and that's how she got the job."

"You mean making the collection was a favor for the captain, and he let her keep on operating as a consequence?"

"I'd think it was something like that, wouldn't you?"

I snorted. "What a magnificent stupe I've been! How much was Eddie's weekly pay-off?"

"A hundred and fifty smackers. It used to be two hundred, but things have been quiet."

"Did you hear her drive away from here? She said she parked her car in the driveway downstairs."

"If she did, I didn't hear her."

"I'll be damned." I frowned, thinking hard. "Listen, Ginny—was Giselle here yesterday afternoon, about one o'clock?"

She shook her head. "I wouldn't know. I wasn't home."

"Where were you?"

"Having my hair done."

"Where?"

"At the Parasol Salon, on Walton Place. What's that—"

"Is there a Mr. Mel there?"

"Yes, but a girl named Josie does my hair. Mel doesn't dress long hair. What's this all—"

"Listen, Ginny—do you know a babe called Diane Doll? She has her hair done in the same shop."

"Gosh, Rusty, it's a busy place. I don't remember ever meeting anybody by that name. Why?"

"I'm trying to figure something. This Diane Doll is a small girl, rather thin, with blonde hair. Mr. Mel does her hair, I think. She's a dancer, or a singer, or something, around the joints. Are you sure the name doesn't hit you?"

Ginny shook her head. "I know most of the showgirls. She might have been on the town, or in some other racket, you know, in which case I might not hear her name. The only small, thin, blonde I can remember seeing in the Parasol is Giselle. I'm pretty sure Mel does her hair—the cutting and setting, that is. Margaret takes care of all the bleaching and dyeing."

"What kind of a guy is this Mr. Mel?"

"He's a good hairdresser, I guess. As a stylist, he does a terrific—"

"What kind of a guy is he?"

"He's not a queer, if that's what you mean."

"Can he be bought?"

Ginny shrugged. "Most people can, can't they? It's usually a matter of price."

"What would this Mel's price be?"

"High, I imagine. He has a good clientele and probably makes plenty. What are you getting at, Rusty? You don't think Mel has anything to do with this, do you?"

I didn't answer her. I was busy shifting things around in my mind, trying to make what she had told me fit a picture which was getting clearer and clearer. It was a nasty picture, but, no matter how I shifted the pieces, they fell into the same format.

"I want you to do something for me, Ginny," I said slowly. "It's really two things. One of them may be tough."

"I owe you a lot, Rusty. I'll do whatever you say."

"I want you to get busy on the phone and see if you can find somebody who knows Diane Doll. I want to know where she lives, her racket, if any—and I most especially want to know the name of the man in her life. If you have to pay for the information, do so. But get it."

"Sure. What else?"

"I want you to tell me where those DuMorell sets are."

She hesitated, but only for a second. "They're on the second floor of an old loft building on West Madison Street, Rusty." She mentioned the street number. "Want me to give you the key?"

"It would be better."

She got up, went into the bedroom, came back with a key. She pressed it into my hand. I stared at it moodily and weighed it in my fingers for several minutes, estimating not only the size of the lock it opened but the size of the trust it was an evidence of. I slipped it into a pocket. She sat down at the dinette table again and toyed with a spoon. I put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed it gently.

"I'm not promising anything, Ginny," I began, "but I'm going to try to get us out of this as clean as possible. I may be able to cash in on the sets—and I may have to dump them. Whichever it is, it'll be the best deal I can make, everything considered."

"I trust you," she said simply. "I thought about this last night, after you'd gone to sleep, and I guess... Well, I guess we all have to make a choice, sooner or later, don't we?"

"Yeah." I stood there a moment with my hand on her shoulder, then I bent, cradled her chin in my other hand, and kissed her. "See you later, kid," I said. I turned and walked out.

The Parasol salon turned out to be a small but lavish establishment. Its plate-glass window held a large portrait of a dynamic-looking man with dark hair, serious dark eyes, and square chin. A legend beneath the pictures identified him as: MR. MEL—Hair Stylist—Creator of the French Scissors Cut. I pushed on the door and went in.

It was a long, narrow shop bustling with activity and bright with fluorescent lights, rippled glass booths, chrome dryers, gray-veneered furniture. In the first booth, a man who looked more harassed than dynamic was assaulting the long, wet hair of a worried-looking brunette with a straight razor. He wore a white sport shirt, gray flannel slacks, and had cropped gray hair and the beginning of a paunch. Mr. Mel himself.

"Yes?" he asked without looking up. The razor hovered over the girl's hair. He threw a handful of shorn locks into a nearby wastebasket.

"Are you Mr. Mel?"

"Yes. What can I do for you?" He gave me a quick glance, parted off another section of hair, removed it with the razor. He seemed to be scalping her, but he did it casually, like a man slicing butter.

"I'd like to ask you a few questions."

"I'm busy."

"So I see. It's about Giselle Kent. I understand you identified her body."

"That's right." He nodded, finished removing nearly all the hair on one side of the girl's head, and started on the other. 'Too bad. Have they found out who did it?"

"Not yet. That's why I'm here. You see, there's some doubt as to whether the body you saw is actually that of Miss Kent."

The razor stopped in the air—"Doubt?" he ejaculated, beginning to look dynamic. "Why should there be doubt? I know her very well."

"Another person identified the body last night as that of Diane Doll."

"Pardon me, please, Miss McDonald," he said to the girl on whom he was working. "I'll be back in a moment." He laid the comb and razor on his dresser. Taking my arm, he drew me toward an adjoining booth. "I don't like to talk about one woman in front of another," he explained, speaking in a low voice. "There was no mistake about my identification of Miss Kent. She was a hell of a nice person, a woman I liked, and I've dressed her hair, off and on, for eight or nine years."

"She and Diane Doll looked quite a bit alike—" I began.

"No," he interrupted. He gestured impatiently. "If the lights were dim, they might look alike to a man, a man who didn't work with women, as I do, but there wasn't enough resemblance to fool another woman—or a hairdresser. For one thing, Miss Kent was much older than Miss Doll, old enough to be Miss Doll's mother, in fact. She was in the middle forties, I'm sure, and—"

"Hell, I saw the body last night," I said. "She didn't look anywhere near that old."

"The facial muscles were relaxed," he stated. "Death always makes a woman look younger. Also"—he smiled slightly—"Miss Kent had some plastic surgery done a couple years ago. If you had examined her scalp, just within the hairline, you would have noticed a very thin scar, where the facial skin had been drawn back and tightened." He indicated, with his forefinger, where the scar was located. "Miss Doll, of course, is too young to need that sort of an operation."

"You're absolutely positive?"

"Certainly. I've seen Miss Kent's scars often enough."

"What do you know about Diane Doll?"

He hesitated. "Are you with the police?"

"No."

"The newspapers?"

"No, I'm a private detective. I'm trying to find out who killed Miss Kent—if it is Miss Kent." An idea popped into my head. "As a matter of fact, I'm working for Ginny Evans. She told me that one of the girls here does her hair."

"Oh, Miss Evans—of course, a very nice girl." He smiled, as though the mental picture he had of her was exceedingly pleasant. "About all I can tell you is that Diane Doll is—well, a peasant. That's my personal impression, of course, but I meet a lot of women and—"

"What do you mean by 'pleasant?'"

He chuckled. "She's a small-town girl who's new in the big city, and she hasn't learned her way around yet; in other words, the girl's out of the country, but the country isn't out of the girl. When she comes in here, she tries to act like la grande dame. She makes a point of telling where she's been, the new clothes she's got, how much the jewelry she's got is worth, and so on. Money, that's all she talks about, but she isn't used to money. When she tips, for instance, it's either too much or not nearly enough. She doesn't know how a person who is used to money and position should act. Does that make sense?"

"Very much sense," I admitted.

"Will you excuse me now? I'm pretty busy." He started away.

"Do you have Miss Doll's address?"

"No. I don't want her business." He went to his dresser and picked up the comb and razor. He whispered something to the girl in his chair. She laughed and shook her head. Smiling, he ran the comb through a length of hair and his razor resumed its work.

I watched him a minute, then I got up and left.

FIFTEEN. Bargain Business

A JOURNAL truck raced north on Rush Street and, at Oak a kid on the tail-gate of the truck swung a bundle of papers to the corner newsie. I waited until he unwired them, then I bought a copy. I went into the Walgreen drugstore and leaned against a stool at the fountain. Scanning the headlines, I saw immediately that I was still pretty hot first-page copy.

SANDS' SLAYER STILL SOUGHT

The heading was a nice job of alliteration, but the story merely was a rehash of yesterday's meat. There were a couple of new pictures of Fia Sprite, both showing plenty of leg and bust, but nothing had been added to or subtracted from her imaginative story of a girl done wrong, the girl being herself.

In between sips of coffee, I pored through the entire paper, looking for a story about a minor massacre in Poljako's Garage. The first trip through, I spotted nothing. Puzzled, I went back to page one and checked each page carefully. On page three, at the bottom of a column, I found a half-inch of type, set in the size usually used for fillers: