SSC (1950) Six Deadly Dames (18 page)

She picked up a book and flung it on the floor. “Larrimore was just a nosy newspaperman,” she rattled on. “He got some dope and he tailed it down. Tony, the bum, was a pay-off man for that vice ring the cops have been trying to run down. Larrimore began to nose around the
Venetian Cellar.
He had brains, that guy. It was tough. I had to smoke him-but the dough looked good.”

Men were in the hall outside now.

Donahue urged: “Keep it up, keep it up.”

“What will you get out of it? I can feel the heart now.... So this guy Larrimore hangs around Tony's for a few nights. But Tony didn't know who he was then. Larrimore was getting the lay of the land all the time. Every night he was there he picked up one of Tony's janes. He never picked the same one twice. After the janes began to compare notes it comes out that Larrimore would do nothing but take them to swell night-clubs and then send them away in a taxi. He always called himself Jack. He used to get them tight and then send them away so drunk they couldn't remember what they'd said.

“Tony began to get worried. So then one little dame comes back after one of those sessions with a stroke of con science. She used to be a friend of Magistrate Paglioni-”

“Who?”

“The boss of the vice ring. Magistrate Paglioni. Or he was a magistrate till last month. He resigned because the vice ring takes most of his time and there's more money in it. He lives in class now.

“This little dame says she can't remember whether she bragged about her playmate days with Paglioni, but she thought she did. She said Larrimore got her pretty drunk. But she did remember-she did remember that some guy slapped Larrimore on the back in one of those night-clubs and called him-Larrimore.

“Tony got a line on him. Get it? Larrimore, the newspaperman. The guy that's been exposing things for the last year. Tony went to the boss. Paglioni went crazy-almost. I'll tell it. Didn't Paglioni give me the air once? I'll tell it. Paglioni tells Tony to get rid of Larrimore.

“So I'm called in. How do you like that? I'm camped in and Tony says it's worth five thousand to bump off Larrimore. I angled so that Larrimore picked me up. He picked me up in Tony's.”

Fists pounded on the door.

“Keep going,” Donahue said.

“We hung around and drank and then he said we should go somewhere else. To a ritzy place. I said sure. See, he never figured there would be any danger from a jane. He never figured that I packed a rod. I had it, baby, in my purse. We had the cab all ready. The guy who came in and took you out before-he drove it. It was parked outside, waiting.

“Larrimore and I got in and we drove off. We went over to Third Avenue and started north. I was a little tight and nervous, because I hadn't bumped off a guy in a year and I was using a new gun. I heard an Elevated train coming up. I thought quick. I told Larrimore I would like some bourbon and pointed to a door where I said he could get some. Mike pulled up to the curb.

“Larrimore backed out, but he was suspicious. He looked it anyhow. He stood on the curb as the Elevated roared by overhead and then I let him have it. He dropped like a log. I was sure I'd finished him. I told Mike to drive off.”

Donahue heard the fists pounding at the door. He heard a key grating and withdrawn. But he was transfixed by the woman. Age had crept upon her. She looked haggard and vicious and dissipated. She was no longer the superb actress she had been earlier in the morning. Donahue, who had seen crime in its many strata, looked upon a gun-woman for the first time.

“Open this door or I'll break it down!”

Green-eyed, the woman clutched at her breast. “Say, let's have a gun. Let me blow those cops apart when they break in. Give me a break-before-I go.”

Donahue, who had a stomach for nasty sights, shuddered and began to wear a sickly look. Blindly, the-woman flung herself across the desk, tried to grab one of his guns. He had no difficulty preventing her. She whimpered and lay on the table.

Donahue pocketed his guns, rose, picked up the telephone. “Hello, Libbey.... The name? Downstairs on the door it says Miss Beryl Mercine.... No, not mercy-M-e-r-c-i-n-e.... That's right.... She's lying on the desk now, dead, I believe.... She says veronal. I wouldn't know.... Will that make the daylight editions?... Just, eh? Good.... Oh, that noise you hear is a hot-headed cop about to break in.... Now remember, sweetheart, the Interstate Detective Agency nabbed this case, with Donahue, if you please, to be credited. Don't by any chance slip in any such name as Monahan-Just a minute, Libbey. Hang on.” The door had burst inward. The patrolman loomed there with his gun drawn. A man in plain-clothes held a gun. Behind them, looking over their heads, was rosy-cheeked Kelly McPard, and farther back, Monahan.

The patrolman stamped in, red-faced, angry. “What the hell's the idea? I've been, looking all over this dump for you!”

Monahan yapped: “It was a trick! See! He's got a woman!”

Kelly McPard came in, wearing his fixed cherubic smile. He crossed to the woman, took hold of her hair, lifted her head, looked at her face and let the head down again. Then he looked at Donahue, who was sitting on the desk, holding the phone in both hands and dangling one foot.

“Well, well, Donny, everybody is mad at you,” he said. “I see your hand is all messed up. Tsk! Tsk! What's all the noise, and who's the woman?”

“Beryl Mercine, who murdered one A. B. Larrimore and then died by her own hand.”

Kelly McPard almost lost his smile. But not quite. “I feel downhearted, Donny. I'm just after finding a woman's fingerprints on that cigarette case I picked up, you remember. But it was a woman who was supposed to be out in Akron now. Bernice Marks. Also Barbara Markall. Also-he nodded towards the woman on the desk-“this woman. Good, good work, Donny.”

“But, Sarge,” said the patrolman, “he went and-”

“And,” broke in Monahan, “he said I was mixed up in it. I want an apology!”

Wearily, Donahue spoke into the telephone. “Libbey... Say that Detective-Sergeant Kelly McPard was on the scene ten minutes after I was shot by the woman. He took full command in a very aggressive and thorough manner.... That's right. And also-also, Libbey, mention Monahan's name.... Yeah, good old Monahan. Mention the fact that I saved Monahan from being taken for a ride. He was already in the car. I shot the gunmen smack out of the car. Monahan has just asked me to apologize. I here-by apologize.”

Kelly McPard laughed.

Monahan said: “I'm going. I see I can't depend on
any
of my friends any more.” He glared at McPard.

McPard said nothing, only winked at Monahan good-naturedly, and Monahan, bristling at the wink, turned and stamped out.

Donahue said: “Monahan... on the way down the stairs, Monahan, please fall and break your neck.”

It was only the third round. It had been noised around that the fight would go the limit-fifteen. The odds were seven to five in the champ's favor. He was a big fellow, a kid-twenty-one or two, fighting out of Giles Consadine's stable. He was not particularly sweet to look at, but he” had a nice smile, a nice laugh, and he was the champ.

Rushing Tripp to the ropes, slamming him with both hands, he looked over the challenger's shoulder, smiled at Token Moore. She waved, showed her fine set of teeth between luscious lips. The champ was crazy about her. But there was something peculiar in his smile. Giles Consadine, lean, slightly gray, sat next to Token Moore. He sat wooden-faced, his hands folded on the silver knob of an evening stick. The bell broke up the clinch.

They came out for the fourth, reached the center of the ring. Harrigan ducked. Then he piled two hard ones into Tripp's face.

Tripp clinched, muttered: “Yuh mugg!”

Harrigan laughed, danced away. He began dancing backward around the ring. He looked down over the ropes at Token, at Giles Consadine. Tripp jumped him but the champ was nimble for a big man. He tied Tripp up, broke, tossed him away, went after him. He stopped smiling and his jaw set, bulged. He carried Tripp to the ropes above the press-box. The wet gloves smacked, sopped; they were the champ's gloves. Blood flew, spread like a comet across a newshawk's cheek below. And suddenly the gloves stopped.

The referee was bending over Tripp.

The champ was not looking at him. Nor at the man on the floor. He was looking through the ropes, down at Token Moore, at Giles Consadine. He wore a dizzy grin. And he was laughing. The short, idiotic laughs thumped his chest, pumped his cheeks out and in. Nobody heard the laughs. He just looked as if he had the hiccups.

Giles Consadine was standing, expressionless, lifting a match to a long thin panetela. Token Moore was round-eyed. About them, Consadine's yes-men jabbered, gesticulated. But you couldn't hear what they said. Shouts, roars, screams, laughs, rose to the distant dome of the Arena, cascaded down again.

The newsreel cameras were in the ring, turning. Tripp was on a stretcher; two men carried him from the ring. The champ was glassy-eyed and trying to poke his way clear of the mob in the ring. A man was holding up a microphone, shouting for him. The champ did a breast-stroke for the ropes, swung through.

Consadine, inhaling deeply, let smoke languish from his nostrils. He was laconic, a little abstracted. “That's that, then,” he said, half to himself.

Token Moore gave the impression of a bird fluttering, looking for a place to alight. She fell on Consadine's arm. He hardly noticed her. But a tap on the shoulder made him turn, look around.

Donahue, lean and brown-faced above a single-studded stiff shirtfront, said: “Greetings, Consadine. The kid's a natural.”

Consadine was short with him, clipped: “Thanks.” Turning front, the fight solon bent his wiry gray brows, frowned thoughtfully. He turned around again.

But Donahue was gone.

Token said: “Who-who was the handsome well-wisher?”

“A private dick.”

In a moment the door slid open and Donahue walked into a large elevator.

“Deep down,” he said.

His overcoat was over his arm. He wore a black velour hat slanted over one ear. Humming to himself, he drew from time to time on a cigarette as the car descended. When the car stopped, opened, he drifted into a severely modernistic foyer. A girl in trim black and white took his hat and overcoat and he drifted to one end of the foyer, pushed open a door and entered an elaborate bar. It was crowded, noisy; and beyond, in the vast dining- and dancing-room, a Negro band was playing. The allegorical murals on the walls were in keeping with the name of the
Suwanee Club.
Giles Consadine did most things lavishly.

Donahue pushed into a telephone booth, dialed a number. A woman answered the phone and he asked for Karssen; waited, tapping his foot, whistling to himself. When Karssen answered, Donahue said:

“The champ put the works to Tripp in the fourth.... A knockout is right.... Well, there's something screwy about it. I'd have bet my shirt Tripp was to win.... Not a chance. When the champ got busy Tripp didn't have a chance.... That's all so far, Alex.”

He hung up, squeezed out of the booth and came face to face with Detective-Sergeant Kelly McPard.

“Donny, as I live and breathe!”

“Me and my shadow. How're you, Kel?”

“Just swell, just swell.” He used a neat, manicured fingernail to snick Donahue's single shirt stud. “You look like a million. I never knew you went in for following the fights in a big way. Seems I've seen you at all of them for the past three months. Cleaning up, old kid?”

Donahue said: “I got this suit for a Christmas present. I don't like the theatre. I had to wear it somewhere.”

McPard squeezed Donahue's arm affectionately. McPard was a large man-large in the torso, thin in the legs. His feet tapered off in pointed shoes forever aglow with a high polish. He wore a tailored suit, a tailored overcoat. His starched collar was snug about his plump neck. He was a clean-looking, pink-cheeked man, wily behind the merry twinkle in his eyes and the amused smile that never quite left his lips.

He poked Donahue's ribs, said: “I picked up a hundred bucks on that little brawl, Donny. Not bad for a copper, huh? Hey... once I was a roundsman when Danny Harrigan was a kid. He was nuts about my uniform. Wanted to be a cop. Now look at him! Champ!... Come on, Donny; I'll buy you a drink.”

The head bartender was signaling. “Oh, Mr. Donahue there!”

“Yeah?”

“Mr. Consadine wants to see you.”

“It's free. Tell him to come down.”

“He says upstairs-his office.”

Donahue, leaning elbows on the bar, said: “I can't. My pal's buying me a drink. It might never happen again. Make it a double Scotch, Rudolph, with a bottle of Perrier on the side.”

The head bartender looked pained. “But I'm hangin' on the phone here and the boss-”

Kelly McPard chimed in: “Why act like that, Donny? Go up and see him.”

“I just came down. You think I'm going to spend the rest of the night chasing up and down in the elevator? Tell him,” Donahue said to the bartender, “I'm engaged. No-wait a minute. I'll go up. Tell him I'll be up.”

McPard said: “Tsk, tsk! What a man!”

Donahue stretched his long legs to the foyer, entered the waiting elevator and said “Top” to the attendant. The car rose to the top floor. Sliding doors opened and Donahue entered a carpeted anteroom on either side of which stood a Grecian urn. Three doors faced him. He headed towards the one marked Private, opened it. He did not hurry.

Consadine was seated in a tremendous red leather chair. He was fully dressed, hat on, white silk muffler bunching between the lapels of his black overcoat. He sat well back, legs crossed, and he tapped the patent leather toe of one foot with the end of his walking stick. Kempler, a small, chubby man with a squashed nose and close-fitting ears, sat on the mahogany desk spinning a small penknife at the end of a platinum watch chain. He looked as if he had been shoehorned into his evening clothes.

Donahue elbowed the door shut. “Mohamet comes to the mountain, Consadine.”

Consadine's face was wooden. “Win any dough on the scrap?”

“Didn't bet.”

“Since when did you begin to follow the fights?”

“I take it in spells.”

“This spell began about three months ago, didn't it?”

“You figure close.”

“I noticed you behind me in every scrap I attended in the past three months. Kempler noticed it, too.”

“Yeah,” said Kempler.

Consadine said: “You've been dropping in at the gym, too.”

“Sure,” nodded Donahue.

: “Going to write a book or something about the game?”

“No.”

“Why the sudden lively interest?”

“Hobby,” said Donahue, good-humored.

Consadine said: “Take a tip, I don't like strangers hanging around my stables.”

“I get tossed out if I show up again, huh?”

“That's the idea. And that goes for the
Suwanee Club,
too. You've been practically living there. Stay out of it.”

“In other words-”

“In other words,” said Consadine, wooden-faced, unemotional, “keep your nose clean.”

“Yeah,” said Kempler.

“Finished?” Donahue said.

Consadine said: “Yes, you can go now.” Donahue turned, opened the door. He stood for a moment on the threshold, smiling at Consadine.

“Keep yours clean,” he said.

Kempler thumped off the desk, lumbered over and said:

“What?”

“I wasn't talking to you.”

“What?”

“Nerts.”

“What?”

Consadine said: “Lay off, Kempler.” Kempler lumbered back to the desk, turned, scowled at Donahue.

Donahue said to Consadine: “B-r-r-r! He scares hell out; of me, Consadine.” His voice dropped: “You do, too.” He chuckled, went out, closed the door.