The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction (107 page)

“Torpedo?” he said, and then chuckled. “Oh, you mean Mike.” He shook his head. “He’s quite a boy, isn’t he? He sees too many movies.”

I said nothing.

“Mike’s my attorney,” he went on. “When I was a small operator, Mike was a small lawyer, very broke. Since I’ve made a few dollars, Mike’s tended to put on airs. But he’s a good boy. He’s no torpedo; he doesn’t know one end of a gun from another.” He chuckled again. “This whole affair has been over-dramatized, hasn’t it?”

I continued to say nothing; I’d been trained to listen.

“When I saw your picture in the
Courier
, this afternoon, I decided I had to see you. Since then, I’ve changed my mind.” He paused. “My wife and I have had a reconciliation.”

There didn’t seem to be anything for me to say, as yet.

He lifted his glass high. “Your health.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’m glad everybody’s happy.”

He smiled. “And now, for other business. How would you like to work for the
Courier
?”

“I wouldn’t,” I said. “No offense, you understand. I just wouldn’t want to.”

He shrugged. “I’m changing it. It’s changing with me. It’s going to be a respectable, family newspaper.” He sipped his whisky. “I could make you a really attractive offer. You could tell the snobbish Mr Cavanaugh to go to hell.”

“I already have,” I said.

He didn’t seem to hear me. He was gazing at the floor. His voice was quiet. “That June,” he said. “What is it she’s got? Besides those damned hands of hers—”

I thought of the hands. I thought, fetishism? But they were as repelling as they were fascinating. “I don’t know what she’s got,” I said, “but enough men seem to be attracted to her.”

He looked at me gravely, and his voice was sad and quiet. “That’s what I’m afraid of,” he told me. “It’s an attraction I’m afraid she’ll always have for me.”

I looked at my empty glass. He nodded toward the decanter on a low table. I filled the glass again, and siphoned in some water.

He said, “I love my wife. She loves me. I should leave this town, but I can’t. I’ll have to stay. And with June here—” He seemed to shudder. “Damn her!” he said.

I felt for him, but only a little. It didn’t prevent me from saying, “I’d hate to be in your shoes when you tell her she’ll have to work for a living.”

He stared at me in surprise. It was honest surprise, I felt sure. He said, “I never supported her. I never contributed a dime to her support.”

I was trying to figure that one out when the phone rang.

Peckham went to answer it. When he came back, he looked suspicious. “It’s for you. It sounds like her, like June—”

“It’s probably my wife,” I said quickly.

It was June. “Johnny dear,” she said, “would you like a story?”

Peckham was listening, I knew. I said, “I’ll be home soon.”

A silence. Then, “I see. Well, before you go home, drop in here, and I’ll give you a story that will blow this town apart. Would that get you your job back?”

“Drop in where?” I asked.

The line went dead.

Peckham was standing in the middle of his living room when I turned around. “My wife’s worried,” I said.

His face was cold and set. “That was June, wasn’t it?”

I said nothing.

“I told her I was seeing you, tonight. I told her, this afternoon, that I was through. Your wife doesn’t know you’re here.”

“It was June,” I admitted.

No emotion on his face, the eyes cold and bleak. “Well,” he said, “good night. And good luck.”

He didn’t go to the door with me.

Standing in the entrance hall, waiting for the elevator, I debated the wisdom of going to see June Drexel. I thought of Norah, and forced myself to stop thinking of her. One sentence ran through my mind, around and around. Would that get you your job back?

In the lobby drugstore, I looked up the address of June Drexel.

I was coming through the lobby again, when I saw this woman at the desk. The clerk was saying to her, “I’m not sure Mr Peckham is in, Mrs Peckham.”

The woman was a blonde, tall and poised. She said, “He’s in. Ring and you’ll see. From now on, he’ll always be in to me.”

I went out into the chill of the night. The coupé coughed a little, as I kicked it into life. I headed it down the drive, along the bay. Home? Or to the story? What did I want with a story? I wasn’t a reporter, not tonight.

The coupé hummed along the drive to Iona. I turned up Iona, and followed it to Brady. I took Brady down to Astor, and turned again. On Astor and Knapp, a small apartment building. I sat in the coupé, and lighted a cigarette.

I took two puffs, and put the cigarette out. I left the car and went into the apartment building. Four names on the mail boxes of the lower hall and one of them was June Drexel’s.

The downstairs door had no lock; there was no buzzer. I went through it, and up the stairs. I started to think about those damned hands of hers, the pale hands.

Her name on the door, up here, and I pressed the bell button.

I could hear it ringing, inside, but nothing happened. I remembered how the line had gone dead. I trembled, for some reason. I tried the knob; the door was unlocked.

The door opened a crack, and I could see a light on, in there. I pushed it open a little more, and saw June Drexel.

She was sprawled awkwardly on the floor of her living room. I pushed the door open all the way, and went in.

There was a hole in her forehead, a small hole. One table lamp sent a dim light through the room, and the radio played softly. I thought a .22. It wouldn’t make much noise. I knew, now, why the line had gone dead. That speech of hers had been overheard, had meant to be overheard.

My eyes went to her hands, her now-quiet, pale hands. I saw something on the floor, about a foot beyond one outstretched hand, and I bent to pick it up.

I shouldn’t have touched anything, of course. I should have gone immediately to the phone. I looked at what I’d picked up, and a pattern began forming, a pattern I couldn’t believe. But the pieces came in, fitting themselves, making the picture.

I was still standing there when I heard the sirens, outside. Somebody else had phoned, evidently.

I reached over and put this thing I’d found in my shoe.

Sergeant Hutson, of homicide, was the first man to come through the door. He looked at me. “Johnny, for God’s sakes—” He looked at June Drexel, on the floor.

“I didn’t do it,” I told him.

“You phoned?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t phone. The murderer probably phoned, when he saw me come here. He knew I was coming.”

“We’ll have to run you in, Johnny,” he said.

I nodded. “Sure.” I kept my eyes from her hands. I tried to feel sorry that she was dead; one should mourn the dead.

*   *   *

It was a narrow cell, smelling of disinfectant, of dampness, of former occupants.

It was quiet, except for the deep breathing of other cell occupants, except for the occasional sound of voices from the lighted front room.

I sat on the hard cot, my head in my hands, thinking it all out, and worrying about Norah. Sergeant Hutson came along the corridor, to stand in front of my cell. “You want us to phone anybody else, Shea?”

“No,” I said. “I want to talk to him, first.” I looked up. “How about prints?”

“Plenty of ’em. The damnedest thing about prints, though. They’re no good unless you got somebody to tie ’em to. Or unless they’re prints on file someplace. What the hell good are they without that? We can’t check ’em against the whole city.”

“I’l give you somebody,” I told him.

“I hope so,” he said, and paused. “For your sake, Shea, I hope so.” He went back along the corridor.

He isn’t calling me “Johnny” any more, I thought. I’m on the other side of the fence now.

I thought about Norah, and June Drexel, about Peckham and his wife, about Peckham’s attorney, who saw too many movies, about Tom Alexander and Sammy Berg, about Bitsy Donworth – and about Peckham’s offer. In the adjoining cell, somebody began to snore.

Then there were feet along the corridor, and I stood up. The turnkey and Robert Justice Cavanaugh.

His voice was firm and reassuring. “Don’t you worry, Johnnny. The
Star
will back you. I’ll back you, all the way. It’s Peckham’s work; you can be sure, and—”

“Peckham,” I broke in. “You were certainly jealous of him, weren’t you? Until you got tired of her. Until you wanted to get rid of her.”

I could see him stiffen, as the turnkey went away. He said, “What the devil are you talking about?”

“Murder,” I told him. “This afternoon you worried more about what I knew about June than you did about the trouble in the DA’s office. That should have been a lead. You were always after Peckham. That’s another. When June phoned me tonight, she knew I’d lost my job. How? How many people knew that? Not Peckham. You did. It all ties up. Peckham wasn’t supporting her. You were.”

“You’re talking nonsense, Johnny,” he said. His voice was low. This afternoon, in his office, he’d called me “Mr Shea”. He was on my side of the fence, now.

“It took a gimmick,” I went on, “to show me the way. You must have dropped it; the catch must have broken.”

I reached down into my shoe, where the police hadn’t searched, and brought out the tiny jet elephant he always wore on his watch chain.

A silence, while he stared at it in the dim light. Then he made one more try. “It doesn’t prove anything, Johnny. It will only create a nasty scandal. They won’t get me. I’ve too much influence. But it will hurt the paper, hurt me.”

“They’ve got enough proof,” I said. “All they want is somebody to fit it.”

His voice was even quieter. “They don’t know why I’m down here.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “Unless June told others what she was going to tell me. It wouldn’t be so much of a scandal if you hadn’t always been so noble, such a campaigner. But murder’s a scandal, for anyone.”

The man in the next cell rolled over, and mumbled in his sleep.

Cavanaugh said, “Editor, Johnny. For more money than you’ll ever need. A job for life, Johnny.”

A job for life, with the biggest paper in town. Why not? What had June Drexel ever meant to me, except trouble? I thought of Norah and Junior. I said, “You can go to hell. That’s where you’re going eventually, anyway.”

Amateurs shouldn’t commit murder. He hadn’t even got rid of the gun. They didn’t need his confession, to burn him. Once they had the pointing finger, they tied evidence to him like ornaments to a Christmas tree. His old pal, Gargan, the DA, couldn’t handle it, so an assistant DA took over and did a fine, clean job.

The
Courier
has changed plenty, just as Peckham promised me. It’s a clean, family paper, and getting to be the biggest in town. We call ’em as we see ’em, and I’m proud to be city editor of a sheet like that. Norah is proud of me, too, and even Junior gives me a little, grudging respect from time to time.

I checked the flight records at the Trans-Ocean Airline desk to make certain that the man I knew only as Leiderkrantz was on the Constellation due from Lisbon. Then I went down the stairs to the luncheonette and sat over a cup of coffee, listening for the flight’s arrival to be broadcast over the public address system. Watching the steam curl from my coffee, I began wondering again if I were inviting a brush with the police on this job and realized that there wasn’t much I could do about it now. The big clock on the wall above the gleaming coffee urns said 10:27 and already the big Constellation was probably radioing La Guardia Tower for a landing.

It was supposed to be only an escort job; and there wasn’t a lot to worry about if you looked at it from that angle. But, on the other hand, there could be trouble; and the fact that Schweingurt had hired me instead of getting the regular police to handle the assignment gave me something to think about. I couldn’t talk myself out of the argument that this was no routine private case. In the first place, Schweingurt had been restless and jittery when I talked to him earlier; secondly, the little package Leiderkrantz was bringing in from Europe made him a choice target for a slug or a knife in the ribs, or for a quick bath in Flushing Bay, somewhere around Whitestone where it would be dark and deserted. Lastly, I was pretty sure Leiderkrantz was smuggling in the Dionysus statuette; and this is what made me worry about getting messed up with the Customs authorities and the police.

Schweingurt had reassured me about this. “It’s all on the level,” he had said.

“Of course, there must be secrecy up to a certain point because there is a strict prohibition against removing artworks from Greece. The government of Greece has enforced this for fear the country’s artistic wealth will be dissipated. But once the Dionysus statuette arrives here, there will be nothing more to worry about.”

But his small black eyes had been greedy. He had absently wiped the palms of his hands along the knees of his light trousers. They had left a dark, wet mark. I wasn’t so sure I believed what he had told me.

The public address system was announcing the arrival of Trans-Ocean Flight 7. I slid off my stool, swallowed what was left of my coffee and went down to the gate. People crowded the glassed-in barrier. A policeman and a girl attendant, dressed in light-blue and holding a clipboard of flight reports in her hand, stood on the ramp just outside the gate. I flashed my agency shield at the cop, and he scowled, sizing me up and down. For a minute, I didn’t think I was going to make it easily; then he nodded his bullet-shaped head and let me through. I stood alongside the girl in the blue uniform, wanting very much to take a second look at her delicately featured face and honey-colored hair; but I didn’t dare take my eyes from the plane.

It bothered me that I had no idea what Leiderkrantz looked like and I decided the best thing for me to do was to wait until the blonde attendant checked off the passengers as they filed through the gate. I didn’t believe much could happen to him or the statuette between the plane and the gate.

A glistening chromium gangway was shoved across the ramp to the door of the cabin; and a stewardess opened the cabin door, blinking in the morning sun and smiling. She stood aside as the passengers filed out of the huge plane, down the gangway and across the ramp. Mostly, they were familiar faces, influential men in State and Politics, stage and screen idols. A couple of them looked annoyed at the absence of photographers and press reporters.