“You think she was hiding from something?”
“Or somebody. Which could explain why the killer took her along instead of just offing her on the spot.” I got up and crushed what was left of my cigarette beneath my heel. It was seven-thirty and I felt like an open sore.
Alderdyce said, “I don’t imagine it will do any good to tell you to hang back on this one.”
“Has it ever?”
“Why? There’s no percentage in it.”
“I’ve been hired to do a job. I’ll try to stay out of the cops’ way, for what it’s worth.”
“The road to hell is smooth as glass, Walker. It doesn’t need your help.” He made out a release order for my car, which had been impounded, and handed it to me.
I put on my coat and hat. “Just so I can say I asked, did Bingo Jefferson have any enemies besides the Mafia and the steel mills?”
He hefted the metropolitan telephone directory from his desk, six pounds of paper and ink made flabby with use. “If you’ve got a couple of minutes, I’ll cross out the names that don’t apply.”
I grinned. “Get some sleep, John. You spend too much time at the station.” I stepped out and got the door shut just as the directory thudded against the pebbled glass.
M
Y LITTLE ONE-BEDROOM
house in Hamtramck accepted my return with the glum indifference of an old dog that had long since given up on receiving affection. The air was stale, and dust swirled in the sunlight slanting in through the windows. I showered off the smell of cops, fixed myself a drink, and sipped it between scrapes of my razor. It made my hand steadier, so I left the razor soaking while I fixed another. I spent most of the morning wearing toilet paper on my face.
Robed and carrying my drink, I went into the kitchen, made coffee and a fried egg sandwich, and ate it sitting in the nook as I paged through the morning edition of the
News,
which I had picked up on my way home. Bingo Jefferson’s misfortune, reported just before press time, was disposed of in three paragraphs on an inside page under the heading
MONTANA BODYGUARD FOUND SLAIN
. The location was referred to simply as “an apartment on Cass,” and a suspect was reported in custody. Me, though they didn’t use my name. There was no mention of Ann Maringer.
I was too keyed up to sleep. I grabbed a broom and a dust rag and put my three rooms and bath to rights, then flipped on the tube, where the earlybird movie was just winding up.
Background to Danger,
with George Raft. A wartime propaganda piece, in which the Americans were the good guys and our battles were fought two thousand miles away by hired men in uniforms that helped you separate friend from enemy. I like old movies; my ex-wife used to say that I liked them more than her. She was right. They’re a yardstick for determining how far we’ve come or how much ground we’ve lost. In this case I couldn’t decide which it was. I turned off the set in the middle of a commercial pitch for the “Hits of the Dave Clark Five” and went to bed.
After a couple of hours of rest without sleep I got up ahead of the alarm, knocked off a hundred pushups just to prove I could, put on my good suit and a tie I hadn’t got around to wearing yet. If I didn’t feel like a new man I could at least look like one. My heap started with the indignant noises a horse makes when it thinks it deserves a rest, but on the road the mammoth transplanted Cadillac engine took over and conveyed me in satisfactory time to the east side. It was a sunny day and the hookers were in full bloom.
I touched all the bases. The landlady at the apartment house, black and tart-tongued, with harsh creased features and a voice like a boat whistle, said she’d spoken to all the cops she cared to for one day and tried to bang my face with her door. I pried myself in with a roadwise five-dollar bill long enough to learn that her dancing tenant had been living there for only six weeks, that she always paid her rent on time, and that the landlady made it a point never to pry into her lodgers’ business. I left while she was telling me a funny story about the two queens who were living together on the top floor. I used the pay telephone outside her door to dial the number I had in my notepad for Nate Washington, who my client had said had referred her to me. A recording informed me that it was no longer in service. On the lam, I thought as I hung up and retrieved my dimes.
A black in dirty green work clothes was sweeping curls of dust across the sky-blue floor of The Crescent as I descended the steps and asked him if the owner was in. He wagged his head toward an open door behind the bar.
The man in the storeroom was an Arab, tall and thin, with a beak nose and Valentino eyes. He had lobeless ears very flat to his head and black hair that gleamed blue in the dim overhead light. His suit was new, the crease on the trousers as sharp as the edge of a fresh hundred-dollar bill. He was watching a pair of men, one black and one white, check off the names on the labels of bottles in wooden cases against a list on a clipboard in the black man’s hands as I approached.
“More police?” he asked, after I had introduced myself and explained the nature of my visit. His intonation rose and fell monotonously, like a chant. But his English was good. “No wonder I pay such taxes.”
“I’m not with the police. I’ve been hired to find Ann Maringer. What can you tell me about her?”
“She was a good dancer.”
I waited, but he didn’t add anything. “That’s it?”
He shrugged exaggeratedly. “How much more must one know to hire a dancer? Nothing else is any of my business.”
“How long has she worked here?”
“Since February. I have told the police this.”
“What about Bingo Jefferson, the dead waiter? When did you hire him?”
“I didn’t.”
“Who did?”
“No one.”
I said, “You mean he just started working? Just like that?”
“Not quite. He came to me last night just before opening. He said his name was Ben Adams and that he was filling in for my regular waiter, who was sick. Franklin Detwiler.”
“Where can I reach him?”
“He lives with Coral Anthony, one of the dancers.”
“You mean she lives with him?”
“If that was what I meant I would have said that. What’s that wet there? Open that case.” He indicated a sealed crate atop a stack in the corner, dripping with moisture. The white worker took up a crowbar and inserted it between the boards on top. Nails shrieked as he applied leverage.
“Where can I reach her?” I shouted, over the din.
“Who?” The Arab was concentrating on the crowbar’s progress.
“Coral Anthony. The dancer Detwiler lives with.”
“Look her up. Can’t you see I am busy?”
I waited while the loose board was pried off and the three inspected the crate’s contents. Then: “Did Jefferson have his baseball bat with him when he came on?”
The Arab looked at me strangely. His sharp, desert-brown features were dominated by large black eyes like dates, lusterless, without moisture. “I know you,” he said at length. “I saw you talking to Ann last night. You are the man who attacked my waiter.”
The two workers turned to stare at me. I was vaguely aware that the janitor’s broom had stopped sweeping outside the storeroom. Tension grew like mushrooms in the damp.
The Arab said, “Grab him.”
The black man dropped his clipboard clattering to the cement floor, took the crowbar from his partner’s hands and came toward me, jiggling it. He had thick, sloping shoulders and a head of close-cropped grizzled hair mounted on a short neck. The light from a dusty fifty-watt bulb in the ceiling shone purple off a scar like a dueler’s cicatrix on his glistening brown cheek. I seized a bottle by the neck from a nearby crate and smashed it against the edge. The jagged end glittered in my hand. Whiskey fumes—rank, nauseating in that close room—enveloped me.
My challenger hesitated a moment, then grinned. He liked the idea. We were squaring off when the Arab swept a short-barreled revolver out of his expensive jacket and showed me the round blue emptiness of its bore.
“Please release the bottle.” To the man with the crowbar: “I said grab him, not fight him.”
My weapon tinkled against the concrete floor. Immediately the gun swung in a short, vicious arc and caught me on the side of the head. Purple lights blossomed behind my eyes. I staggered backward, coming up hard against a stack of crates behind me.
“I think that the police will be interested in the package we have for them,” he announced calmly, transferring the revolver to his other hand and shaking circulation back into its mate. “But not until we have finished with him.”
“You’re finished.”
I recognized the voice, its flat blandness, but I was too busy marshaling my senses to place it right away. The Arab turned toward the door, through which Lieutenant Fitzroy was striding. His expression beneath the porkpie hat belonged to someone who had just remembered a wry joke.
“Lieutenant,” greeted the owner, his tone drenched with Near Eastern hospitality. “I was just going to call the station. We have your murderer.”
“I hope you also have a permit to carry that, Mr. Krim.”
The Arab glanced down at the gun as if he’d forgotten he was still holding it. “Of course.”
“I see it’s a thirty-two caliber. Would you object to our borrowing it for a comparison test?”
“Not at all.” His teeth glowed against the brown of his skin. “If you have a warrant.”
Fitzroy smiled back. They were fast friends, these two. Krim put away the revolver.
“Hello, Mack,” said the lieutenant to Scarface. “Glad to see you learning some trade besides making license plates.”
Mack, still holding the crowbar, grumbled something I didn’t catch and dropped it. It clanged deafeningly.
Fitzroy said, “Walker has already been in custody and released for lack of evidence. If you’d excuse us I’d like some time alone with him.”
The Arab’s eyes, almost without whites, shifted from my face to Fitzroy’s and back to mine. Finally he nodded. “Fortunately we do not require evidence.”
“Thank you,” said the lieutenant, as the workers followed their employer out the door. “This city could do with more public-spirited citizens like yourselves.” He watched as the door closed. Then he whirled and sank a fist in my stomach. I doubled over, emptying my lungs.
“Just a little reminder to stay out of my case,” he explained. “The landlady at the apartment house called me after you left. I figured you’d come here next. You’re as predictable as you are curious, Walker. Sooner or later one of them’s going to get you killed.”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly to ease the pressure. “Thanks for the advice, Lieutenant.” My croak was fairly normal. “I won’t forget it.”
“Are you threatening a police officer?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. But if you hit me again you’d better have a month’s sick leave built up.”
He watched me closely. “I’m strongly tempted. I’d like to see how much of you is mouth and how much muscle.”
“Screw you, Lieutenant.”
Seeing his jaw tighten and his muscles bunch, I braced myself. I’d promised him one more try; after that things were going to get lively. Then he relaxed, smiling.
“Some other time, shamus,” he said. “When there are no witnesses around to tell the judge how the big mean cop beat up the defenseless snooper. Yeah. I’d really like to see.”
“Where’s Tonto?”
“If you mean Sergeant Cranmer, he’s doing some legwork for me. I didn’t know you were a racist.”
“Goons come in all colors. You’re a prime example of that.”
“I should be offended,” he said cheerfully. “I’m not. I asked around about you. Stackpole at the
News
says if you ever murdered anyone you’d probably have a good reason. Alderdyce doesn’t like you much, but he says your word is good, eventually. He claims you’re a good cook and that you like old movies.”
“Not all old movies,” I put in. “Just some. And I don’t get as much chance to cook my own meals as I used to.”
“Who gives a damn? You fought in Nam, played cop in the army, took a stab at the police training course here, and dropped out. Why you dropped out is none of my business. The point is, the worst anyone has to say about you is that your mouth is faster than your brains, which I knew going in. Maybe you didn’t kill Jefferson. Maybe you’re just doing your job, like me. But you’re grubby, Walker. You follow a grubby line of work, snooping for grubby people. You know what a grub is? A slimy gray worm that steals food in the dark and shrivels to nothing when the sun shines on it.”
“Don’t be cagey, Lieutenant. You don’t like me.”
“You’re starting to shrivel,” he observed. “Right before my eyes.”
“I’m just doing my job, like you said.”
“Back off, grub. Otherwise I’ll leak your name to the press as a suspect in the Jefferson murder and you’ll be grouse for every black militant in town, not to mention Phil Montana.” He pulled open the door. “You go first. Arabs hold grudges and I don’t want two murders on this street the same day.”
The telephone directory had Coral Anthony living on Brainard. It was a solid old structure with an ornate facade blurred with age and a frieze of colored glass across the front, those pieces that remained in place catching the light and throwing it back among the blank spots like the sparkle in a dirty old man’s eye. The dancer’s name stood alone in neatly printed capitals on a yellowed slip of paper taped next to the room number in the foyer. The main door was unlocked. I went on up.
“Who is it?” drawled a feminine voice in reply to my knock.
I gave her my name and added: “I’m pushing my card under your door.”
Halfway through, the card darted from under my propelling finger. I rose.
“What do you want?”
“I’m investigating Ann Maringer’s disappearance,” I said. “I’d like to ask you a couple of questions.”
Locks and chains rattled, a lot of them. Finally the door opened about eight inches and I was confronted with a striking aquiline face the color of old gold. She had high cheekbones and large dark eyes with hard black lashes like curry combs and cornrowed hair and a long neck that swept in an uninterrupted line to the division of her breasts, framed in heart shape by the lapels of a red velour robe growing shiny in places. She was nearly as tall as I am. I glanced down and glimpsed golden toes peeping out of flat-heeled slippers. The trip back up to her face was scenic, as the robe clung to her various hills and valleys like a very thin coat of red paint.