Homicide at Yuletide (12 page)

“What kind of transaction?”

“A business deal.”

“What kind of business deal?”

“Involving the jewelry. But right about then, I’d say, ideas begin to take shape. If she can work one out, if she can do a perfect cover-up, she can wind up with the whole bagful of jewels, and nobody will be looking for her, not even Barney. She can dispose of the pieces, bit by bit, Mexico, South America, Europe, and in time, she can be set up sweetly. And not like Sheldon Talbot. Not hounded.”

“All right,” Parker said. “Let’s get down to cases.”

“You see that place down there? Thirteenth Street?”

“I did.”

“Looked like a whirlwind hit it, but the guy’s laid out clean and neat. Landlady’s there all day, but she doesn’t hear a sound. Strictly a frame job. Did you boys get that?”

“We’d have come to it.”

“All right. I get hired by her to go up there to tell the guy that she’s in jail, that he’ll have to mark time. Why me?”

“Because I picked you,” Parker said. “That’s why.”

“Exactly. Because the somebody
you’d
recommend would be somebody you had confidence in. That somebody was going to fix the time on those two watches, the wrist watch and the electric one, and it would be kosher, you’d believe what he’d tell you—you, or anyone else in the Department. That figured to be the time of death, and it was important that it be fixed good—because she was in jail at that time, and where’s there a better place to be when somebody’s being murdered on Thirteenth Street?”

“So?”

“There are things that hit you that you don’t figure, until it jells. For instance, that door was open. Why? Here’s a door with a key and a lock and an extra snap-lock. Here’s a guy hiding out, probably keeping that big forty-five near and ready, yet the key’s on the inside of the lock, the door’s open, and the snap-lock is clicked back. It bothered me without my knowing it was bothering me. Now we know why. She wanted to make it easy for me to get in.”

“All right. For God’s sake. Do it straightaway.”

“Okay.” I took a cigarette, sat Barney down, and I started walking. “She says he called her yesterday morning. That’s a lie. He called her before that. She may have seen him previously, but she certainly saw him the day before yesterday. She spent most of the day with him, and most of the night. She probably slept over with him. She wanted to know just where that package was, and she found out just where it was. During the evening, they dropped into a neighborhood night club.”

“Eddie Nuki’s?”

“Of course. She must have tried, but she just couldn’t stop that from happening. She goes back with him, sleeps over, gets him in the right frame of mind. He’s going to have visitors in the morning. She waits that out. Then she goes up to Barney Bernandino. ‘Our man just called me,’ she says between Martinis. ‘He’s ready to make the deal. I’m going down now to talk with him.’ She goes back down there, shoots him, waits in silence, hoping that one shot would be mistaken for an explosion in the street, backfire, something. If not, well, I shot a guy in self-defense, and she’d still stand good with Barney, because then her whole scheme would be up in the air, and she’d turn the stuff over to him, and he’d save fifty thousand bucks, and maybe even add a little something to her fee.”

“All right,” Parker said. “Don’t start straying.”

“She’s lucky. It works. Nobody inquires. Then she messes up the room, sets the clocks ahead, one at one-ten and one at one-thirty. There’s no reason for that, the discrepancy, except that the electric clock was probably running twenty minutes ahead of the wrist watch, and maybe somebody had noticed that, and she wanted everything in status quo. That’s also a guess, but I’ll bet on it.”

“Go on.”

“She’s careful, of course, about fingerprints. She’s been careful about fingerprints every time she’s been there. Okay. Now she’s in a hurry. She can’t have too much time elapse from when she leaves Barney’s to the time she gets picked up in the traffic jam. How’m I doing, Genie?”

She didn’t answer.

“She leaves the gun, picks up the package, sticks it into her handbag, gets out of there, drives back uptown, turns the car downtown, and runs into that Chevvie after getting the cop on her tail for speeding. Maybe, all told, a half hour disappears somewhere, but who’s checking the time? Not Barney. Nobody. Look what all that explains.”

“What?” Parker said.

“She’s doing seventy miles an hour on the East Side Highway. Purpose? To be arrested. She doesn’t stop for the motorcycle cop. Why? Same reason. She crashes that Chevvie. Why? Same reason. She gives lip to the cop. Why? To make sure. No driver’s license. Why? To make doubly sure. She pays me five hundred bucks for the job. Cash. Who’s got five hundred bucks in a wallet, unless it’s there for a preconceived purpose? Not a broken-down would-be lady shamus.
And
she’s got the wallet. It has her identification, it even has her P.I.’s license. Then where’s the driver’s license? Not in the wallet. Why? Because she made sure that it wasn’t there. She wants to be arrested. Check?”

“Check.”

“Okay. So now she gets sprung. Now we come to the good part. She still has that hot package in her purse. She hasn’t had an opportunity to dispose of it. She gets out of jail, where is she?”

“Where?”

“With me. Right from being with me, one of Barney’s boys picks her up. Then she’s up by Barney, with the old knapsack right beside her. Then she’s with me again, coming down to my apartment. My place has been given the old heave-ho by a couple of Barney’s searchers, just in case. Sooner or later, we decide, they’ll look her place over, just for the hell of it. She’s got the stuff, right on her. Where to put it, for the moment, until the heat simmers down?
Right here
. Right here in the joint that’s already
been
looked over. I get called out by Barney, and she plants it.”

“How did you know?” Parker said.

“Baker Street, my boy. I didn’t know. I didn’t know until you said the magic word, cockeyed. Once I had her pegged, I added it, I used the old Baker Street head. Where would she put it? Yesterday, she couldn’t even get to a bank vault, by the time we got out of Barney’s it was far too late, and today’s Christmas. And my keys just don’t get up and waltz away, all by themselves, not when I distinctly remember putting them right here on the table.”

“So?”

“There’s a couple of things that she can’t figure on, and they rear up and bite. For instance, that Stella Talbot was in that furnished room when I got there, with the gun in her hands, which pulled me right into the mess; personally involved.”

“Why personally involved?”

“Because I liked Stella.”

“This is something new?”

“Also, she didn’t know that Sheldon called Stella from the night club.”

“Which brings us,” said Parker, “to Grace White. What about Grace White?”

“I’m coming to that. Alger Shaw develops a picture-girl who remembers red-beard and a lady, she got them stuck on a photo she was taking of two other people. So now, all of a sudden, Gene Tiny’s got it sticking her right in the throat. Because, according to her, she didn’t even know he was in town, let alone being in a night club with him. According to her, he had only called her yesterday morning. So she had to get rid of that negative, when she found out about it, because her kisser would be on the positive once it was developed. When she got down to that studio on Jane Street, Grace White probably recognized her, which was too bad for Grace White. It’s the old, old story. The worst that can happen to you is that you get the chair, no matter how many you do a job on. So she does the Grace White, and fires the joint, period.”

She was biting her lips now and tearing her fingernails into the flesh of her palms, but she sat there on the couch. Nobody moved. They sat like ducks in a closed-for-lunch shooting academy.

“All right. She’s loose again. Grace White is gone. There’s nothing to tie her to it. The negative is burned. She reports the fire to lover-boy Chambers and she goes home. She’s to pick me up later, we’re to drive out to Noah Cochrane’s crematorium on Long Island. Home, she starts thinking. Lover-boy has already demonstrated the Baker Street head by showing her why he thinks a woman did the job on Talbot, breaking down the plant on Thirteenth Street. This lover-boy is no slob, she decides. He broke that frame down easy. What’s going to happen when he really goes to work? Where else will he break it down? Where else is it shaky? Suddenly she gets slapped right in the teeth.”

“By what?” Parker said.

“By facts. These facts. There’s no one knew about Grace White and the negative, except four people: Alger Shaw, Barney, me, and her. Does it begin to jell, Lieutenant?”

Said the Lieutenant, “It begins to jell.”

“It’s meaningless to Alger Shaw, isn’t it? And me, I’ve got nothing to do with it. And Barney, he certainly would have no reason to put a bullet into Grace White.
Whom does that leaver

“Her.”

“Correct. And sooner or later, she knows that lover-boy is going to come around to that, and when he does, there’ll be a lot of loose ends that he’ll be able to pick up. Where does that leave old lover-boy? Leaves him, she hopes, on the cold, cold ground. Get rid of lover-boy, and then you’re all lined up. It was tougher than you thought, this deal, but get rid of lover-boy, and then it’s all mixed up again. There are plenty of suspects for killing Talbot, a lot of people involved in a trick revocation thing, details, later, downtown.”

I looked at her, directly. “For an amateur, Genie, my girl, you weren’t thinking too badly. You even held back from calling that death in to the cops for twenty-four hours—like that, more time would go by before an autopsy was had, so that the exact time of death would be even more improbable to get at. It would fit with the timepieces you rigged.”

“Finished?” Parker said.

“Just about. She had that Perry Agufen staked out to trail us from Noah’s crematorium, and pull his act on quaint Lorimer Boulevard. And if you want to know where she got him, I suggest you put the screws to Julie Latch.”

Somehow, that got her.

She jumped up and clung to Parker, trembling.

She looked toward Barney Bernandino, but Barney looked away. Toward me. I saw his eyes. All the shine was out of them. His lips were pulled in hard against his teeth and a vein in his forehead bulged and the muscles at the sides of his jaw jumped in unrhythmic welts.

Parker said, “All right, Miss Tiny.”

She didn’t say a word. She took his arm and they started out.

“Wait a minute,” I yelled. I rewrapped the package of jewelry and gave it to Parker. “For safekeeping, Lieutenant. Also, here’s five hundred bucks that I owe her.” I peeled them off.

“Anything else?”

“Nothing else. I’ll see you later. You’ll probably have the full story by the time I get there, but anything I can do—”

“Unorthodox,” he said, “but nice going. Too bad I can’t stick around to see you put the boots to you-know-who.”

T
HERE WAS SILENCE
, when they left, for a moment, a rigid, sick silence, like the silence around a grave when the first clump is thrown in. Then it broke to the loud thrum of subdued hysteria. Potsy began to serve drinks, the diplomat talked in hurried French, the Greek talked in unhurried Greek, the lollipop giggled, somebody turned on the radio, and beetle-brow was acrobatic in a flinging dance with the redhead. Only Barney remained infected, still and silent, cigarettes piling in an ash tray.

I found a hard chair in a corner and I slumped. I could feel the sweat under my arms. Stella came and sat on the floor and put her chin on my knee. She turned her great black eyes up to me and she said, “I know just how tough that was, mister.”

She was older than anyone in the room.

“Thanks,” I said.

“You were wonderful. Now snap out of it.” She tapped my knee, stood up, and brought me a shot of Scotch and a glass of water. I gulped it, said thanks. “Hold your water,” she said, and smiled, and brought another shot. I used that, and she took both glasses away.

I pushed at my thighs and got up and turned off the radio. “Ladies and gentlemen—”

“You know,” Noah said, “you were terrific, man. Though half the time I didn’t know what the hell you were talking about.”

“You wouldn’t,” Gay said.

“Now listen, Gay—”

“I’m
not
listening. We’re finished, Noah. Why don’t you please understand that?”

Potsy said, “This guy annoying you, ma’am?”

“Mind your business,” Noah said.

Potsy ignored him. “How about us two, ma’am?” You’re a real trick chick. How’s about a date?”

“Love it. I think you’re fascinating. When?”

“Now.”

I slapped my hands together. “Ladies and gentlemen—” I kept slapping at my hands, until they were all quiet. “Ladies and gentlemen. I’d like to beg off on the supper party. Rain check on that. Three of you here, well—or is it four?—you’ve sort of wound up with a corpse for Christmas. I know how you feel, but, well—for three of you, you’re now each assured of ten thousand dollars a year for life, so why don’t you sort of chip in, and take the company out for food. Everybody. I’d like Stella and Barney to stay for a while, there’s a little something left over to talk about.”

“Finally,” Stella said.

Barney said, “What?”

“I’ve finally.” Stella said, “wangled an invitation from lover-boy. And don’t linger too long, Mr. Barney.”

“Noah—”

He looked at me. “Yes?”

“Will you come with me a minute?”

I took him to the bedroom while the rest of the group were getting their coats. I dug in for his five thousand dollars.

“Here’s your money, Noah.”

“I say, now—”

“Look, Crematorium. If I can earn a nickel, I don’t care if I blow it up to a hundred thousand dollars. If I can
earn
the nickel.” I sighed. “As far as you’re concerned, I haven’t earned a nickel. Take your money.”

“That’s very nice of you, fella, but don’t you think—”

“It hurts, Noah. Don’t make it worse. You’re losing a wife. Consider it a booby prize.”

I gave him his money and we went back and I said good-by to everybody and I watched the redhead clinging to Noah and Potsy getting the okay from Barney and wrapping an arm around Gay and then there were just Barney and Stella and myself and a lot of cigarette smoke and a sour odor. I opened the windows and let air in.

“All right, Barney,” I said. “Here’s the play.”

“On what?”

“On Prince Krapoutsky’s heirlooms.”

“Play?”

“You’re out.”

“What?”

“Out, my little dictator.”

“Don’t call me no names.”

“You got to bend the way it shapes, Barney, and it doesn’t shape in your direction. Sheldon Talbot bought a load of junk, strictly legal, papers and all—you baited that trap yourself. Now your foot is in it.”

“He bought nothing.”

“Stella here, his daughter, is sole heir and legatee. That’s also strictly legal. You know where that leaves you?”

“Shamus, I don’t like what you’re trying to do.”

“I’m not doing a thing, Barney, except explaining it to you. Personally, I’ve got nothing to do with it. It’s the law. The machinery of the law turns like a meat grinder. You furnished the bulk, Barney. You did it yourself. What grinds out has got nothing to do with me, or you, for that matter. Except—”

“Except what?”

“Except this girl doesn’t know what it’s all about. I know that there’s one loose end. I know that you lent him two hundred thousand dollars—”

“Lent
him?”

“I know all of this, and I’ll explain it to her. And, lucky for you, she trusts me. I also know that you spent some money locating him. Let’s say, five thousand dollars. Is that fair?”

“Well—”

“Okay. Sheldon Talbot left a will, which means the whole deal winds up in the Surrogate’s Court. Suppose you put in your claim for the two hundred and five thousand. I’ll explain it all to Stella. Your claim won’t be contested. Fair is fair.”

“Yeah, but—”

“It’s been done before.”

“But it’s all mine. All of it.”

“Remember what I told you about the law and the meat grinder, Barney. Nothing you can do can change it.

Think, pal.”

“I—”

“So one deal didn’t work out perfect. So what? Every businessman’s got to figure that a few will backfire. And as it happens, you don’t lose a thing, except, maybe, prestige. Where’s the bellyache, when you got the law lined up against you, and you’re still getting your investment back? Any other way—”

One thing about Barney. Barney was bright. He smiled suddenly and put up both hands to stop me. “Can you work it out?”

“I’m sure of that.”

“Okay, I’m the patsy, but what the hell. I take a licking but at least I get my dough back, and that, I’m holding you responsible for. And I lose to a very beautiful girl, so it has what you call a compensation. Okay. Deal.”

“Sucker,” I said.

“You ain’t kidding.”

I brought him his hat and coat. He shook hands with Stella and then he shook hands with me. “You know, peeper, maybe you’re entitled to a fee. I mean, looking at it from a crazy angle—”

“I’m getting a fee, Barney.”

“Okay with me. ‘By, kiddies.”

He left and I told her quickly why he was entitled to his money and she agreed, and I closed the windows and we had a drink together and another, and death and evil and torment fused and folded away in the meshes of your mind because you’re a human being and you cannot live and persist and be normal with the jaggedness of a nagging horror inside of you. The world began to right. I saw the shapely lines of her body in the dark satin gown, and the trim ankles and the pale face and the red mouth and the black swimming eyes. And here we were, all alone, the two of us, of all places, in my apartment.

“You know,” she said. “It’s the first time I’ve actually seen you looking relaxed.”

“Now, baby—”

The caterers came.

The bell rang and men marched in like a sheriff’s army on a disposses pitch, only in reverse. They weren’t taking things out. They were bringing them in. They brought in sawhorses and wide planks and steaming kettles and portable ovens and crockery and silverware and napkins and linens, and before you could say whodunit, the sawhorses and planks became a long table and silver glistened on a white tablecloth and places were set for twelve and a stiff-necked chap with an English accent said, “Late, you know. Very sorry. Truck broke down. Snow, you know.”

“Yeah,” I said. “White Christmas.”

“Precisely. We’ll leave a kitchen man and three waiters. Is that sufficient?”

“No. Nobody.”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“Nobody. No kitchen man. No waiters. Nobody.”

“Quite, sir.”

He presented a bill that had me fluttering, but the figures totaled right, and I am not an expert on catered affairs. I wrote a check, and he bowed, and he waved to the men, and they all waved back, and he bowed again, and they bowed, and then they all trooped out, and we were alone again, Stella and I.

I went to the kitchen and looked in on some of the cooking. I came back and looked at the long, austere, glittering table. “Stella,” I said. “Why don’t you and I take ourselves out to a supper club with a little music and a lot of atmosphere and get something to eat?”

She laughed, near me, holding on to my arm. Then she stopped laughing and looked up at me very seriously. “Five per cent contingent fee, for all you’ve done? You’re cheating yourself. You’re entitled to something more.”

“Well—” I said, “no—” But with the imminent possibility of a burgeoning percentage, I didn’t sound convincing, even to myself.

But I misunderstood.

And she misunderstood the unconvincing “No.”

Before I could disentangle from the delightful maze of the dream of additional increment, she ducked under my arm, and came up inside of both of them, her mouth on mine, and the full shock of her individuality struck me like a sliver off one of those newfangled bombs, and my arms closed tight around her, and so occurred the first chink in the analgesic armor of a crusty old prohibition against eighteen-year-olds, and a Merry Christmas to you, too … and you … and you….