Murder for the Bride (11 page)

Her eyes widened. “Twenty-six. Why?”

“I don’t know. It has occurred to me that you are a very handsome specimen.”

“With this lopsided face?”

“Lopsided, hell! Piquant. Pixy. Tart. But not lopsided. No, I was just wondering why you haven’t gone and got yourself married.”

She gave me a mocking look. “Mine, sire, is a sad tale of unrequited love. I thrust my heart at yon yokel and he spurned it with jokes and laughter.”

“A pretty stupid-type guy, eh?”

She put her chin on her fist. “When I was a sprout, lad, I had a dog-eared old cat named Oliver. Other people fed him, but he loved me. Just me. Very flattering. Who else had a one-woman cat? Nobody. I thought it made Oliver very special, and, incidentally, me too. They sent me away to school. Oliver gave it a fictional finish. He just pined away. No old blunt head rubbing on my leg any more. No big purr like a busted sewing machine. No kneading with the feet. Now for the moral. If Oliver had been capable of spreading his affection around, he would have been a well-adjusted cat. But as cats go, Oliver was psychotic. And I think he influenced my early years. I cannot spread myself around. All I can do is work like hell and try to forget the guy.”

“Ever put it up to him?”

“Nope. Never will. And I’ve never even told anyone about him before, Dil. And I won’t tell you his name, because you’d try to go running after him and pound some sense into his thick head.”

“I’d do exactly that,” I said.

“You said you wanted to hide out until tonight. What goes on tonight?”

“Call it a party.”

“Can girls come?”

“There’ll probably be some there, but I can’t take you. I may not even be able to find the party.”

She stared at me. “You’ve got a line on Haussmann, haven’t you?”

“Haussmann? Who’s Haussmann?”

“When you lie, your nose wrinkles up and your eyes go all bland and silly, Dil.”

“I’d just like to know where you got that name.”

She gave me an enigmatic smile. “Hell, son. Can’t a girl have contacts too? I’m going off to cook. When you need a fresh one, come out in the kitchen.” At the doorway she turned and said, “Barney confides in me sometimes.”

W
hen dinner was almost ready, Jill went off and changed. I helped her move the table over to where we could look out on the little court as we ate. The deep shadows beyond the tarnished bronze of the cupid were blued and purpled by the approach of dusk. In the center of the table she put a slender white candle in a simple wrought-iron holder. The flame was motionless. She had changed to a simple white dress that left her shoulders bare. Her skin was like cream. I had to force myself to stop looking at her. This sort of thing wouldn’t do at all.

The meal was simple. Two small steaks, a green vegetable, a tossed salad. It was much too hot to eat more.

“Tell me more about Barney confiding in you, Jill.”

“Is it fair for you to pump me? And not tell me anything?”

“Now, listen. I want to be serious for a moment. You warned me that this was a big, rough situation, where I might get hurt. I don’t like your knowing that name
Haussmann. I don’t like your digging around too much, Jill.”

“It’s my business. I make my living at it.”

“But you said yourself that the lid has gone on this thing. You can’t print what you find out anyway. So why not drop it?”

“I am a very stubborn girl, Dil. Surprisingly stubborn. Maybe I can’t print it right away. Someday I’ll be able to. That’s good enough for me. And—well, it’s sort of a game to take the few facts you know, and try to make a picture. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle where the rules permit you to manufacture a few pieces here and there. Can I talk about Laura without your getting all huffy with me?”

“Sure.”

“The moralists say that no one is completely good or completely bad. And yet, Dil, I’m almost willing to say that Laura was bad. Call it a consciousness of evil. I don’t blame you. She had her act polished well enough to blind any man. And you never saw her unless the act was in operation. I did, once. That last time. If you can say that a woman, just by her attitude, can turn a perfectly ordinary room into a sort of jungle, then Laura could do it. If and when this Haussmann is found, I think we’ll find him to be a sort of male Laura.”

The steak seemed to have lost some of its flavor. “How about Laura being the dupe of Haussmann?”

“Maybe when Laura was twelve or thirteen she was somebody’s dupe, Dil. But not since that time, and not for long then.”

“Did my—other friends all feel the same way?”

“Maybe not as strongly, but just about the same way.”

“Couldn’t you have stopped me?”

“With a detachment of Marines, or a bullet in the head. Perhaps. Look, Dil. Anything any of us said to you would have been like dropping a match in the gas tank. You were, as we old hillbillies call it, sot in your ways. We could hope it would blow over. But it didn’t.”

“A funny thing,” I said. I watched the candle waver as my breath touched it. “I can’t be sorry I married her. In some funny way it means growing up. Entering man’s estate or something. New set of values. There’s still anger
left, but frankly, Jill, not a hell of a lot of sorrow. More sorrow for a girl who sold dresses.”

“She was part of it all. She had to be part of it all. Paul’s apartment and everything. Who was she with, Dil? Whose team was she on?”

“I can tell you that much, I guess. Mr. Stalin’s team.”

I watched her, expecting to see a slight bulge in the eye department, a look of shocked incredulity. Instead she looked as though she had suddenly put on a mask. A mask that looked like Jill Townsend, but was as dead and expressionless as a clever device made of rubber and plastic.

“No reaction?” I asked.

“Don’t do anything—silly tonight, Dil. Can I come with you?”

“No.”

“Take the key I sent you. You can get back in here. I may not be home.”

“Where will you be?”

“Oh, investigating. That’s a good couch there, if you want to use it. Comfortable. And you may need to stay out of touch for a while.”

“Why?”

“Barney Zeck confides in me. He says a lot of people are annoyed with you, Dil. They think you’ll be more predictable behind bars. And if they give Captain Paris his head, he thinks he can make the killing of that girl stick.”

I stared at her. “Me? He thinks I—”

“I make my guests help with the dishes, pal. Bring out all you can carry.”

It was full night by the time we were done. A bit after nine. She walked me slowly to the door. She put her fingertips on my arm. “You will be careful, Dil?”

“Shy as a mouse.”

She went onto tiptoe to kiss me on the cheek. Her lips were cool. “The best of luck,” she whispered.

Zeck had said that the little affair would take place somewhere within a two-block radius of the Café Lafitte. That sounded like a small area. It figures out to sixteen
square blocks of the Quarter. From Governor Nicholls Street four blocks south to St. Ann. From Burgundy Street four blocks east to Chartres Street. Each block has four sides. Sixty-four streets one block long. The area included everything from very fancy private homes to sodden, murky little bars. It is not a brightly lighted area. The life and color were much farther south, toward Canal. That early, the people were taking advantage of the illusive coolness of the night air. The coolness was largely a delusion. Slow voices were resonant on the galleries. Groups sat on the steps off the banquettes, and fans waved slowly in front of pallid faces. Later, when that part of the city slept, I knew that my heels would make sharp echoes in the deserted streets. I avoided walking directly under the street lamps. When I was forced to do so, I kept my head lowered.

I saw a likely chance sitting on a low step in a doorway. Her blonde hair had a greenish glint. She wore a sheer blouse, a tight skirt. I paused and looked at her. She returned the stare steadily. There is no more red-light section in the Quarter.

I moved over and offered her a cigarette. She took it without a word. When I held the match I saw what the darkness had concealed. Deep pits in her cheeks and her nose. She looked up at me through the flame light.

“Pretty hot,” I said.

“Wanta come inside? Got some beer on the ice.”

“Beer sounds good,” I said.

She got up with a small grunt of effort. She was taller than I had realized. Her posture was bad. Shoulders slumped forward, belly outthrust. I followed her down a narrow, damp-smelling corridor to a bedroom that faced a court. An ancient lift-top soft-drink box had been repainted, but the brand name still showed through. She lifted the lid after she turned on the light. The ice was nearly gone. The box was half full of water. Butter floated on a tin dish and she picked it out and set it out of the way.

She lifted a wet bottle out, deftly hooked the cap off on the side of the box, and handed it to me. I wiped the
neck on my palm and tilted it up. The cold beer tasted good. She took a bottle too, closed the lid, and backed up until the backs of her knees struck the bed. She sat down. It was an old bedstead turned into a “Hollywood” bed by sawing off the posts and most of the legs.

“What’s your name, honey?” she asked.

“Joe.”

“Got a present for Christy, Joe?”

I set the beer bottle down on top of the soft-drink case, took a five out of my wallet, and floated it onto the bed beside her hip. “Not enough, Joe,” she said metallically.

“Enough for what I want. I just want this beer and a little talk.”

“You just want a little talk. You got words you want me to say to you? Once a guy had them all typed out for me to read to him.”

“I want information.”

She stiffened. “I told you guys before. I haven’t seen him in two years. Why don’t you catch him and stop bothering me?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Christy. Look, I heard there’s a show around this neighborhood someplace. I heard it’s within a few blocks of here. But I can’t find it.”

She gave me a look of contempt. “Oh, you’re one of those, eh?”

“Is there a law against it?”

“I say everybody is the way they are, and what can you do about it?”

“That’s a sound philosophy. Where’s the show?”

She bit her lip and frowned. “Gee, honey, I don’t know. But look, I got a friend. I could call her from the corner.”

“Does she know where it is?”

“No, but she’s got quite an act of her own. Me, I don’t go for that sort of thing. Will that do? It’ll only cost you another twenty. Maybe she could come right over.”

“No. I want to find the one I heard about.”

“It runs steep, honey. Maybe a hundred bucks.”

“That’s all right.”

“I sure wish I could help. I know where it
used
to be, before it was raided and they jailed everybody. But they keep it awful quiet.”

“How did you used to steer people when you knew where it was?”

“They had to go to a place called Kobel’s. That’s two blocks over. And get Jimmy the bartender aside and ask him where to find Dagwood.” She giggled. “Hell of a name, isn’t it?”

“But that’s changed?”

“Oh, sure. But say! I bet you Jimmy might know, at that. He’s got a scar. A bad one. It pulls his mouth up. They say a girl dug him with a pair of scissors while he was out cold, and he damn near bled to death.”

“Thanks, Christy, and thanks for the beer.”

“That’s O.K. Look, if you get disappointed, you come back and I’ll call my friend. She’s real pure Creole and cute as anything.”

She came out with me. When I looked back she was sitting on the step again. I walked to Kobel’s. You went down one step from the sidewalk to get into it. It was the sort of place that makes the hair on the back of your neck crawl. Even though it wasn’t logical, you had the feeling that you could get your throat cut for fifty cents in there. Very probably the worst that could happen would be a micky and then a roll job in the nearest alley. I was glad of the blue-black shadow of beard on my throat and jaw. A few men sat at tables. Several stood at the bar.

I went down to the far end of the bar near a stone doorway that led into a dingy back room. There was no music. There was no conversation. Just those men, each sunk in his own particular and special hell.

I had no doubt that the bartender was Jimmy. I would have guessed at hedge clippers rather than scissors. The scar started under his right eye and slanted down to his mouth. The lip was pulled up so high that it lay against the side of his snub nose, and left three gold-capped teeth permanently exposed. It gave him a whistling speech defect.

“Can of beer,” I said. He named some brands. I picked one. I watched his hands carefully as he jacked holes in the top of the can. It was that sort of place. I laid a five on the bar. As he reached casually for it I said in a low voice, “Keep the change, Jimmy.”

His hand was a plump ocher spider that stood poised on stubby legs over the bill. “Who are you?”

I hunched forward. “I was wondering where Dagwood hangs out these days.”

He leaned forward and whispered, “Ain’t you a little out of date, pal?”

“I haven’t been in town for some time.”

“Dagwood ain’t around no more, pal.”

“Who’s holding down his job?”

Velvet eyes with surprisingly long lashes dropped significantly down to glance at the bill. I added a twin to it. The plump spider sucked them up and whisked away with them. “Guy named Abner took his place.”

“How do I find Abner?”

“This is no guarantee, pal. They got to take a look at you. And you’re early. Right about midnight, a little before, you go up to the corner. Take a right. Halfway down the block is a warehouse, on the far side of the street. There’s a picket fence with a green gate just beyond the front of the warehouse. Rap on that green gate. Anybody answers, you’re looking for Abner. Have your dough ready, too. One hundred bucks on the line.”

“How is it?”

“When would I have a hundred bucks, pal?”

A man signaled down the bar. Jimmy went down to take care of him. I finished the beer and walked out. I didn’t feel at ease on the street. A cruiser that went by, decal on the door, didn’t help any. I had the feeling they were going to flick on the spot and pin me against the wall like a bug on a board. I was sweating more than the heat excused by the time the cruiser turned down the next street. I followed Jimmy’s directions and oriented myself in respect to the green gate. The picket fence was only about ten feet long, and too high to see over. No light showed through the pickets.