Homicide at Yuletide (6 page)

“I see.”

“His first motivation was fear. There had been the fear of Barney, which had caused him to go into hiding. Then, he had committed murder, and it hadn’t worked. The ad showed we knew he was alive. So the fear remained. Added to that was the fact that he hadn’t been able to sell any of the stuff, except some very small pieces, because of that very same fear of being found out. He was poor, ill, and disgusted, and he was getting old. He had to risk it.”

“Logical enough.”

“When I met him, I hardly knew him. He had grown a beard and both that and his hair were dyed that awful red color. He walked with a limp which he managed by always wearing one regular shoe and one with an elevator heel that short men use. He was furtive, but he wasn’t really worried about Barney when he and I had our first talk. He felt that nothing would happen to him while he had the stuff hidden out. We talked for hours at a time. I spent two weeks in Chicago, and I think I convinced him. He said he’d come to New York shortly. In the meantime, I was to arrange the deal. He would sell the stuff back to Barney. All he wanted was fifty thousand.”

“Cheap enough, in the circumstances.”

“He wanted to make it sweet for Barney. He said he needed that money only to re-establish himself, while he was arranging for the revocation of certain trust funds.”

“Trust funds? What kind of trust funds?”

“He didn’t tell me. It wasn’t any of my business. He wanted no part of Barney. It was all to work through me. I called Barney long-distance, told him, and Barney agreed.”

“What did he have to lose?”

“Nothing. Barney’s smart. Either way, he had nothing to lose. He could send out and kill the guy, but that way—no profit. At an additional fifty thousand, it was a steal. He would have paid Krappie that extra fifty, had Krappie insisted.”

“Let me add it up,” I said. “Trotto offered a half million. Barney spent two hundred thousand, now an additional fifty, and an extra twenty-five to you if you could swing the deal. Thus Barney could earn himself a clean two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, if you could bring it off.”

“Correct.”

“So?”

“I came back to New York, and waited. Twenty-five thousand dollars is a lot of money to me. I kept my fingers crossed—and then Sheldon Talbot called me. This morning. He told me he was in town, where he was. I was not to tell Barney. I was to go up to the Kitten House and make the arrangements. Then I was to come down to him and get it all ironed out. I was on my way down there when I got into that miserable traffic mess. That’s it. Period.”

She finished her drink and I made her a new one, and one for me.

“So here we are,” she said.

“What about the other fellow?”

“What other fellow?”

“The one mashed by the truck.”

“Horrible.”

“Yes, but what about him?”

“Someone he had picked up on Madison Street and fattened up for the part. Stole a truck and did it himself. I never wanted to listen to the details. Man by the name of Fred Thompson, which name, as you know, he took over.”

I left her looking at her drink and I went and washed and combed my hair. When I came back, there wasn’t much of the drink left to look at, and she smiled at me, really, for the first time. “You’ve been very sweet,” she said.

I sat down beside her, close. Warmth radiated from a full thigh. “Listen,” I said, “if there’s anything I can do, don’t hesitate. And it isn’t the five hundred.”

“What is it?”

“You.”

She giggled. “Played straight for that one, didn’t I? And consciously.” She sipped once, put the glass aside, lifted her hands and touched her hair. “You know, I think I’m high.”

That was all right with me.

Her eyes slid to mine and stayed there with a pert expression that could be worked into more various shades of meaning than a simple declaration from a visiting ambassador. Boiled down, it was either “Come and get it,” or “I know what you’re thinking, dope,
try
and get it.” Her hands stayed up at her hair, fluffing, putting additional, but immensely interesting, strain on the off-the-shoulder blouse.

I construed the expression my way.

I moved my head under her elbow, and put my mouth on hers. Her arms came down around me, and I shifted to get comfortable. So the phone rang.

I let it ring, but the moment was broken.

I wiped my mouth and answered it.

“Pete?” It was Barney. “I want you to come up here, Pete boy.”

“You want me, huh?”

“It’s business, Petie.”

“Ask me nice, boss-man.”

“I want to talk to you, Pete. Seriously.”

“When?”

“Now.”

“Well—”

“It’s business, Pete.”

“All right.”

I went back and I told her, “Barney wants to see me. Stick around, won’t you? Whatever it is, I won’t be long.”

She stretched her arms and smiled. She stood up and came to me and kissed me on the forehead. “Perhaps it’s just as well the phone rang when it did. I’ll tidy up here for you. We didn’t do a good job at all.”

“Sure. Thanks. You may as well stay in practice.”

“Why?”

“Knowing Barney, sooner or later, he’s going to get the idea to give your place the dipsy-doodle.”

She laughed. “Good old Barney. How does he get into places, just like that?”

“Leave it to Barney. Barney has ways.”

I
CLOSED MY COAT COLLAR
against driving snow. There was a cab right at the door, for which I sent up fervent thanks. Snow is fine and beautiful but I am a hothouse number, city-bred. To me snow looks good on post cards or on travel ads where the girl on skis flies through the air with her green scarf flapping madly. Let her fly and let it flap. I am patient, come winter. You close your eyes and you draw a deep breath and the girl comes down off her travel ad and there is a new one with brown legs and white spray and a red background of blazing sun.

The cab mushed while I dozed.

At the Kitten House, I suddenly remembered I had worked right through a hangover. That gave me pause while I sent my name up to Barney. The Kitten House is formal. To see Barney, you must send your name up. My name carried weight. I had to wait only forty minutes (although a drink was served) before Potsy came for me.

“You know how it is,” he said. “That guy’s got a million things going for him.”

We took the elevator upstairs and I gave my hat and coat to Potsy. Barney was slumped in his swivel chair wearing the penitent face of a horse-player the day after payday.

“Make him a drink,” Barney said.

“He already had a drink. How much can this guy hold?”

“Experts,” I said, “have commented on that. And for my money, you’re no expert.”

“Make him a drink,” Barney said.

“Like to make him a mickey.” But Potsy grinned good-naturedly.

The drink came, and I sat near Barney by the desk.

“I been thinking,” Barney said. “I wouldn’t be surprised I maligned you.”

“Maligned,” said Potsy. “The boss is getting real fancy these days, catering to the upper crumbs. What does it mean, maligned?”

“I don’t know,” Barney said. “But if it means what I think it means, I did it to Petie over here. You sore, Petie?”

“No.”

“I been thinking. You certainly don’t figure. You wouldn’t know what it’s all about, and you wouldn’t have the time to really operate. But you know how it is. You got to cover the angles.”

“Sure, Barney.”

“I’d like to have you working on this, Petie boy. The girl is a fine little tomato. How you doing there, by the way?”

“Same as your other figure.”

“Which means what?”

“I haven’t had the time.”

The puissant Potsy squealed like a wrestler going through the ropes. His teeth showed bright. “A card,” he said. “A real card. A whole deck of cards.” He smote my shoulder tenderly. I gasped, grabbing the glass as ice jiggled. “A very very funny fella, boss.”

“Hilarious.”

“Yeah, hilarious. What’s hilarious?”

“Some other time, Potsy. And that’s enough with the hysterics. Pete, lay off the cracks. This moron has got a peculiar sense of humor. Where were we?”

“A fine little tomato.”

“Yeah. A sweet kid, and plenty smart too. But now that the guy’s got kicked off, we are stacked up against major problems. For which I need a major operator.”

“Like who?”

“Like you.”

“Thanks, Barney. From you, it’s a compliment.”

“That’s enough with the schmoos. You want to earn some money?”

“I’d like to chat first.”

“Chat? Chat? Chat about what?”

“Talbot.”

He brought up both hands and, delicately, pushed fingers against his temples. “Look, don’t talk to me about that son of a bitch. How do you like that guy? Putting the buzz on me for two hundred G’s. Two hundred G’s. A professor, yet. Two hundred big ones, Petie. And me taking care of him like he was my son. I had that cookie set up like a prince.
Prince?
What am I saying? It aggravates me to talk about them, Pete. It aggravates me right up to the hairline. Look, Petie, you interested in earning a buck?”

“How?”

“By working on this.”

“I have been working on it.”

“Why?”

“I wish I knew.”

“So I’ll give you a reason. I’ll give you a lot of reasons, green ones that you got to pay a tax on.”

“Wait a minute, Barney. Tell me about the guy.”

“What can I tell you? Genie gave you the spiel, didn’t she?”

“That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about the man himself. What about him? What kind of a guy? You took care of him like a son, didn’t you? Well, what about your son? What do you know about him that could help?”

“Help what?”

“I don’t know. Just help.”

“I don’t know nothing about him except he’s a smooth-talking professor who is crazy about jazz, the late stuff, the modern stuff. Outside he loves to gamble, there’s nothing else I know about the guy. I figured him for one of them simple characters, you know, educated, but simple, so look what he goes and pulls on me.”

“Do you know he was in town for three days before he called Gene Tiny this morning?”

“No. How do you know?”

“I’ve sort of been dabbling around.”

“Dabbling,” said Potsy. “Everybody’s fancy today.”

“Do you know, for instance, that he called his daughter last night?”

“No. For Chrissake. No.”

“Do you know, for instance, that he’s seen all of his ex-wives during that period?”

“No. No. No.”

“See what I mean?” I drank a good deal of the highball.

“That’s what
I
mean,” he said. “That Gene Tiny’s a good kid, but this needs a real operator. Like you. I mean—”

“Can I use your phone?”

“What?”

“Your phone.”

“Sure.” He looked at Potsy, his lower lip stuck out, his head cocked and his eyebrows flying.

“Like I said before,” Potsy said. “A card. I know this guy from way back. Right away he’ll stand on his head and make like a Yogi, or yogurt, or whatever you call them.”

I reached for the phone, closed my eyes remembering a number, opened my eyes and dialed.

“What’s with the phone,” Barney said, “all of a sudden, in the middle?”

“Sudden thought.”

“About what?”

“An assistant.”

“An assistant?”

“Like I told you, boss,” Potsy said. “A card.”

I waved my hand, backing off talk, as a voice came over the wire. “Yes?”

“Alger Shaw, please.”

“Right now Alger Shaw is putting mustard on a frankfurter.”

“Quite,” I said. “When he’s finished putting mustard on the frankfurter, may I speak with him, please?”

“Certainly. Why not?”

“Mustard on a frankfurter,” Barney said wildly. “What’s the matter with this guy?”

“Like I told you, boss—”

“Shut up.”

“My sentiments,” I said, hanging on to the phone.

I waited, watching Potsy replenish my drink.

Alger Shaw was a dog-tender on Eighty-Sixth Street and Second Avenue. His livelihood involved the unhinging of the succulent tubes, placing them on the sheet-metal broiler, rolling them as they fried, wiping grease from around them, and dispensing them wrapped within toasted finger-rolls, sauerkraut if desired. Occasionally he pulled a lever for grape juice. In this manner he earned sixty-five dollars a week, protected in sickness and in health by the Encased Meat Products and Salami Vendors Union, Local 69. Alger was young, dark, tall, slim, and fetching, wounded once in the service of his country, but that didn’t show. When Alger smiled and bowed from the waist, the ladies did nip-ups standing still. Alger with a tuxedo on was like a crooner with his mouth open—the girlies flocked. He was a denizen of all the night spots, earning much more than the sixty-five provided by the union, but Alger was a smart young man who knew (wise lad) that the indiscriminate virility of youth does not spurt forever, so he clung to his union-protected sixty-five, come sickness or health, and occasionally he did odd jobs for the private richard.

“Hello?” Alger said.

“Pete Chambers.”

“Howya, Pete? Something?”

“You busy tonight?”

“Busy squiring a predatory blonde from South Bend, if you can call that busy. What’s it to you?”

“Can you squire her where you please?”

“Are you kidding?”

“You want to earn an easy C?”

“If it’s easy, sí. Sí, and sí.”

“Listen. There’s a guy I want to check on. A guy, I’m told, that has an interest in modern jazz. There’s the big joint uptown, Mad City, but he doesn’t figure to go there, it’s too populated. But there’s Eddie Nuki’s joint in the Village, and that other place, Palace of the Burp. Can you make those two?”

“Why not?”

“This guy’s easy.”

“Whenever you tell it, it’s easy. That’s to keep the price down.”

“This guy’s really easy. He was at a night club last night. He figures for one of those jump joints, one of the two I mentioned.”

“What does he look like?”

“That’s what I mean by easy. He’s a guy with a wine-red beard, a wine-red head of hair, and a limp.”

“This a rib?”

“No.”

“There ain’t no guys like that.”

“Listen to me, will you, Alger? The description I gave you, that’s the guy I want you to check. A guy like that, it wouldn’t be too easy not to notice. Anything you get on him, any iota of information, anything at all—I’m interested. Check?”

“A hundred?”

“Any beef?”

“No. I’m hired. I’ll be in touch.”

I hung up and looked at Barney.

Barney looked at me. “Unconventional,” he said.

“It works.”

“It’s your business, you work as you please.” He got up and bent over the desk. He opened a drawer and reached into it and counted out twenty-five hundred dollar bills. He came near me and scraped the sheaf under my chin. “You’re working for me, kid. You’re on the payroll. Any special extra expenses, just call on li’l ol’ Barney.”

“And what can I do for li’l ol’ Barney?”

“I’m looking for a collection of jewelry. Genie told you, didn’t she?”

Sadly, I removed the tickling temptation from beneath my chin I pushed his hand away and sipped once from my glass to wet my gullet to ease the reluctant words that were going to divorce me from a fee. “What jewelry?” I said.

“Prince Krapoutsky. I thought Genie told you.

“Sure she told me. But according to what she told me, that purchase was made in the name of Sheldon Talbot.”

“That’s right.”

“So what’s your interest, boss-man?”

“What? What?”

“If he’s the owner of record—what can I do for you?”

“Do? Do? Why the son of a bitch of a professor—listen, peeper, I want that ice.”

“Why?”

“It’s mine.”

“Is it?”

“Now, look, punk—”

“You look, boss-man. It hurts me, but I have to refuse the twenty-five hundred.”

“Why?”

“Ethics.” I was beginning to enjoy myself.

“What?”

“Ethics.”

“What’s ethics?”

Potsy said, “That’s a movie, boss. When they spend a hundred dillion dollars on a picture—that’s, an ethic.”

“Epic,” I said.

Barney said, “Look. Make up your mind. What is it with you? You lisp?”

“Ethics. All of us have certain rules that we live by. There are guys that won’t sleep with another guy’s wife.”

Falsetto-voiced, Barney said, “That’s ethics?”

“People have to live with themselves. Everybody has—well—some kind of cockeyed set of ethics.”

“All right, all right. The more you talk, the less I understand. What’s sleeping with other guys’ wives got to do with Sheldon Talbot?”

“This, simply. You cannot employ me to attempt to recover a stack of jewelry that doesn’t belong to you. Now, can you?”

“What are you giving me, peeper?”

“It was a straight purchase by one Sheldon Talbot, a famous scientist, from one Prince Krapoutsky, an infamous louse. Bill of sale and all. Under any interpretation of the law, then, the property of Sheldon Talbot. What do you want to make me—a lawbreaker?” I opened my innocent eyes, big.

“Look, punk—”

“Respectfully and regretfully, I decline. I’m a stiff with ethics. At heart,” I sighed deeply, “a country boy.”

Potsy approached, shook his head lugubriously, took hold of my lapels, and lifted me out of the chair. “I got an elegy for guys like you.”

“Leave him alone,” Barney said.

Potsy dropped me back in the chair. “A real elegy.”

“Elegy?” I looked to Barney.

“Allergy,” Barney said. “He means he’s allergic to country boys.”

“Ah, allergy. Allergy Written in a Country Churchyard. Like that?”

“Wit,” Barney said.

“I can make a rhyme to that, but I won’t. Not in mixed company.”

“Nothing’s mixed about me,” Potsy said.

I put my drink away and flattened my lapels. “Look, Barney, you can’t hate me for not taking your money. I’ll do what I can to find out who blasted Talbot. That I’ll do, I promise you. And I’ll let you know.”

He riffled the money, looked at me, looked at Potsy, sighed, and put the money back in the desk drawer. “Somebody,” he said, “ought to pay for that.”

“For what?”

“For you working on this.”

“Agreed, underlined, and imprinted on my brain in deep italics. But who?”

“Me.”

“Forget it.” I looked at my watch. “Is the audience over, Your Highness?”

“Get the hell out of here.”

• • •

Snow fluffed thickly. I fought the Yukon of buried sidewalks, flailing for a taxicab. There were taxis standing still with wheels whirring in the tenacious grasp of White Christmas, and there were taxis plowing cautiously bearing their load of flush-faced customers, and there were taxis, stationary and driverless, buried beneath snowbanks. There was no taxi for me.

I made it without snowshoes, but shuffling like a muscle-bound tennis player, to the subway, and I rumbled about underground watching mist pour from people’s nostrils, and then up again into the snow, and I shuffled some more, and then I stamped my feet in my lobby and shivered, and took the elevator to my apartment, and got out of my clothes, and into the shower—and suddenly I realized that Gene Tiny wasn’t there.

I came out quickly and looked for her, shower water dripping on the carpet. I looked intently, like you look for a lost cigarette lighter or a dropped wallet, lifting the pillows on the couch, that sort of routine, until I realized that highball after highball, in nimble nimiety, had caused the gorgeous Gene Tiny of fine proportions to dwindle in my mind to a slyly hiding Lilliputian. Lamb-like and naked, listening to the hiss of steam from my radiator, I broke out a cigarette, but my wet hands spoiled it. I crumpled it and flung it toward an ash tray. Head hanging, I was heading back to the shower when I saw the note on top of the television. I lifted it with dripping fingers.