Authors: Mickey Spillane
"I'll go to a lawyer," she said. "I'll get a
real
private eye. We'll prove—"
"I didn't take the paintings, kiddo. Maybe whoever killed your grandfather did. If your grandfather was murdered, aren't you interested in finding out who—"
The door opened and a big guy stormed in.
Whether it was on cue or not, I don't know. I found it a little hard to believe that Harry Marina was smart enough to cook up such a scheme, although Anna was. Anyway, he'd either been waiting just outside the door through all this for the right moment, or had been parked down on the street and came up to see what was taking so long.
Anna stepped away from the desk, bumped against the little refrigerator. Finally she got around to starting to button up.
"Hammer made a play, Harry," she said nervously. "Do you believe this guy? He said he'd give me the paintings back if I—" She shivered at the thought of my hands on her pale flesh. Not too convincingly.
Harry was six two in a black T-shirt and blue jeans and work boots, two hundred plus pounds, little of which was brains. The shirt may have been part of Anna's plan, as it showed off his muscles. But Harry had some gut going, too, so I wasn't that impressed. I could have taken the .45 out from under my arm and really got his attention, but that would have been overkill.
He came over like a halfback finding his way through the line and kicked the client chair out of the way.
"You goddamn sleazeball, Hammer," he said. "I oughta break your fucking neck."
"I don't have the paintings," I said.
He reached across the desk and yanked me over it and clippings and photos went everywhere, and he tossed me. I landed hard on the old wooden floor, right where the bullet had gone in. He stomped over and leaned down over me—he had booze on his breath but was not drunk—and his teeth were bared and his eyes were stupid as he grabbed me by the lapels.
"You come across with those paintings," he said, "or I'll—"
I threw a forearm into his chest with enough power to send him backward. He didn't lose his balance, but he did have to work to maintain it, which gave me enough time to get to my feet, and as he was straightening, I threw a hard right hand into his breadbasket and he bowed to me, polite bastard that he was, and I brought locked hands down on the back of his neck and sent him to the floor with a
whump.
I was about to kick him in the head when I felt her hands on my arm, gentle not gripping, and her big blue eyes were pleading up at me.
"No, Mike. Don't. Don't hurt him. Can't you just please give us the paintings?"
This distraction allowed Harry to tackle me, and I went back past a yelping Anna, who jumped out of the way, and I hit the floor again, not hard but he'd let go of me and got to his feet and was diving at me now, and there wasn't room between the desk and the fridge for me to get clear, so I stopped him with a foot that caught him in the balls and his eyes popped and his face turned white as he dropped, his dead weight coming right at me.
I did manage to scramble out of the way just before he
whammed
and get back behind the desk against the window. Anna had retreated over by the couch opposite the file cabinets, a clawed hand to her mouth. Her hubby was curled in a fetal ball, hands buried between his legs, his pain so great he couldn't express it other than to show me a bright red face with a vein-popping forehead and bulbous eyes.
I grabbed him by an arm and dragged him to his feet. He walked like a monkey as I guided him to the door. I opened it, shoved him out on the landing, hoping he wouldn't fall down the two flights of stairs. Half hoping, anyway.
When I turned, Anna was right there, looking ashamed, with that wide-eyed expression I'd seen from her when she was a kid and Doolan caught her stealing money from her grandma's purse.
"Thirty percent?" she asked.
I took her by the arm and flung her out, too, slammed the door on them, and locked them out using the key already in there. The sound of them picking themselves and each other up, and their footsteps going down the stairs, was a pleasure to hear.
I picked up the place.
I had another beer.
Maybe she was adopted.
Irritated that the thought of those freckled breasts persisted in my mind's eye, I ignored the pain in my side from hitting the floor and got back to work. Soon I was digging into the most boring but potentially illuminating of the file drawers—the paid bills, bank statements, and so on. Again I worked backward, starting with the most recent.
And a little over two months before Doolan's death, there it was: the receipt from the Soho Abstract Art Gallery for payment of fifteen thousand dollars for two paintings by George Wilson.
"If you are thinking, sir," the prissy male voice at the gallery told me over the phone, "that we underpaid your friend, I can assure you that we gave a reasonable price."
"I understand you have to make a buck. I was told they were worth around $25,000 for the pair."
"That's the approximate retail value, yes, but Mr. Doolan was in a hurry. He said he needed to raise the money quickly and was willing to accept a strictly wholesale offer if cash was available."
"Cash?"
"Yes. That was, of course, a red flag to me, but he did have the provenance. Do you know he bought those paintings thirty years ago for a pittance? Several hundred dollars each! I would say he made out quite well on the deal."
"Not that well."
"Oh?"
"He was murdered."
I thanked the guy for his help and pressed on sorting through receipts, wondering what the hell Doolan had needed the money for. Fifteen grand was a lot of dough for an old coot to spend in the last months of his life, even if he was hanging out at Club 52.
A possible answer came quickly—here was another receipt, from a travel agency, for $956.75. One round-trip ticket to Bogotá, Colombia, with the return date open, for a Georgina Wilson. Cute alias considering how the money was raised. The receipt was in the Wilson name as well, so she must have made the booking herself.
I called the travel agency, and the woman on the phone, who was the manager and very efficient, remembered the ticketing.
"Yes, Ms. Wilson is an attractive blonde in her mid- to late thirties, I would say. I remember her well because she wore her sunglasses throughout the interview, and her hair was quite lovely."
"Platinum?"
"I would say more ... ash blonde. She had her passport with her, which really isn't necessary for ticketing, but she had me look it over to make sure everything was in order."
Probably to see if it passed muster, since it was the passport for the nonexistent Georgina Wilson.
So for some reason, two months before he was murdered, Doolan had sent his blonde friend—girlfriend—to Bogotá. If the fifteen grand had been raised for this occasion, the plane fare only put a small dent in it, a top-notch phony passport maybe another grand. So he was funding what might be a long stay, judging by the open-ended return ticket. A vacation for her?
Without
him? That made no sense.
But what did make sense? Colombia was among the biggest exporters of cocaine in the world. Was that it? Was this Doolan's last case?
And on the desk, the
Saga
clipping with the headline
THE MARK OF BASIL
taunted me.
By late afternoon, I was punchy from research—at least the visit from the Marinas had provided a little exercise—and I was about to give my blurry eyes a rest and close up the office when the phone rang.
It was Pat.
"Remember Joseph Fidello?" he said.
"I never met the guy. But isn't he Ginnie Mathes's former boyfriend?"
"He's a former everything now. I'm heading over to take a look at his body."
"Fidello's dead?"
"Well, his throat was cut ear to ear."
"That'll do it."
***
The shabby brownstone rooming house on West Forty-sixth was one of many in the neighborhood, and Joseph Fidello's one-room flop was typical of its kind—peeling wallpaper, a battered dresser with a two-burner hot plate, a standing lamp, some odds and ends of furniture, and a daybed that folded out with a wafer-thin mattress.
The latter had Joseph Fidello on it, and the mattress had soaked up a lot of his blood. He was on his back, a slender but muscular guy about thirty, maybe five nine, with an anchor tattoo on his left biceps. He was in an athletic T-shirt and boxers, his arms and face tanned and the rest of him pale as a blister. Not much body hair. He looked like a kid.
His eyes were open in frozen terror and his mouth was peeled back in a silent scream. His gaping throat made a second screaming orifice, the blood congealed and almost black. He'd been dead a while. Rigor had set in. His bowels had given way, so it smelled rank in the little room.
We had beat the lab boys here—nobody around but the uniforms who'd caught the squeal, and they were out in the hall. What seemed to be the murder weapon had been tossed on the mattress near the corpse's right hand.
"Gee look, Pat—it's another suicide. He cut his own throat."
"Very funny. Check out the knife without touching it."
"And here I was going to play mumblety-peg." I leaned in. It was a stiletto with a black enamel handle with
J.F.
inlaid in pearl. "Pretty fancy blade for a guy in a fleabag like this."
Pat was looking at a billfold taken from a pair of pants on a chair nearby. "He's a seaman—Seafarers International Union card. But I knew that already."
"You checked up on him like I suggested?"
Pat gave me an irritated glance. "I'd have thought of it without your help. Fidello didn't keep a regular residence—probably just rented between jobs. Worked passenger ships in the engineering department."
"You're going to want to get a list of what ships he's been on and where he's been."
"What would I do without you?"
"
You
called
me.
" I glanced around. "This room's been searched."
The closet door was open, and clothes had spilled from hangers onto the floor—nicer clothes than somebody in this kind of room might normally own. On the other side of the room, the dresser drawers were askew, and a scarred-up nightstand's drawer was halfway out.
"Searched like his late ex-girlfriend's apartment was," Pat said thoughtfully. "For what?"
A pouch of diamonds?
"Sailors bring in all kinds of valuable contraband," I said with a shrug. "Narcotics, maybe."
"Maybe," Pat said. He scratched his chin, his hat way back on his head. "
Something
small, anyway. Something Ginnie could have been carrying in her purse the night she died. A fat roll of bills? Stolen gems, possibly?"
I just shrugged.
We were at the foot of the bed in the cramped little room. He pointed at the corpse, who seemed to be studying the ceiling. "Suppose Fidello got in over his head smuggling gems into the country and got his ex-girl involved. Innocently involved perhaps. As a go-between, a delivery girl—and got her, and then himself, killed. What do you think?"
"Reasonable theory," I said with another shrug. Pat was a smart guy. Damn near made me feel guilty, not telling him about the pebble.
From out in the hall came a female voice: "I'm Assistant D.A. Marshall. Is Captain Chambers in there?"
The uniforms made way for her, and she came in and found somewhere to stand. I'll give her credit—she didn't register the stench. Not even a nostril twitch. She was in a black pinstriped pants suit with a gray silk blouse and all that dark hair was up. She looked like a schoolteacher you were really afraid of and also wanted to jump.
"Captain Chambers," she said with a nod. "Can you fill me in?"
"Ms. Marshall," he said. "It's early days. Forensics hasn't even shown yet. Meet Joseph Fidello. He was Ginnie Mathes's boyfriend, or ex-boyfriend. The Mathes girl was the victim at—"
"The crime scene three nights ago," she cut in. "I know. I heard the name Fidello on the scanner and made the connection. I'm keeping up with your reports, Captain."
She hadn't acknowledged me yet, which took balls of a sort, because I was standing there grinning at her, fists on my hips like Superman. I stayed that way, listening as Pat filled her in on what little we knew about this crime scene—the knife handle looked to be free of prints, probably wiped—and when the lab boys showed, we moved into the corridor.
Pat was at the doorway filling Forensics in while I took Angela by the elbow and walked her a few paces down for some privacy. Somebody was cooking pork and beans.
"We have to stop meeting like this," I said.
"Hello, Mike."
"Another itty-bitty kill, and great big beautiful you shows up at it. What gives, Angela?"
She cocked her head and her smile had a devilish cast. "What are you doing for dinner tonight, Mike?"
"Are you asking me for a date again?"
"We can make it separate checks."
Even so, I had the feeling that with this doll I'd pay, all right.
"P.J. Moriarty's at eight," I said. "I'll book the reservations."
"See you there, Mike."
She returned to the latest crime scene and I got out of there before Pat Chambers guessed anything else right.
Lonnie Dean and I sat in the same old-time bar in a different booth. Ernie, who'd introduced us, wasn't around. The young reporter on the organized crime beat may have had the mustache and long hair of a hippie, and the ridiculous pointed collar of a circus clown, but he was a pro, all right.
The kid lighted up a cigarette and sucked some smoke down, held it like it was grass, then let it go, adding to the fog in the crowded gin mill. It was just after six and the bar was three deep, and the voices and laughter of reporters topping each other made a harsh music punctuated by the clinks of glass.
The young waitress smiled at me—she knew me now, especially since I'd left her a five-spot last time—and delivered an icy draft Miller without my asking. She might get another fiver.
"There's no talk of gems being used for money-laundering purposes," Lonnie said with an apologetic shrug. "I have good contacts on that front—the freelance fences, the pawnshops who work the angles, nobody indicates anything along those lines."