The Fatal Frails (4 page)

The fat man waved his hands wildly in the air. “Don’t you get gay with me, Max. This guy comes looking for you because Dechant sent him. It’s not about the symbol markings, he says. How in the goddam hell does he know about the symbol markings? Are we running ads in the papers? And what were you and Dechant—”

“Will you dry up and blow away, Arends?” Max Stitt cut in. “You make me sick.”

“I make you sick!” The fat man’s voice rose shrilly. “Don’t you talk like that to me! You may run this business, but I own it, and don’t you forget it!”

“Maybe you’d like to try running it yourself?” Stitt’s cold eyes shifted from the momentarily silenced Arends to Johnny. “What’s your story?”

The question revived Arends. “I already told you his story I” In his anger the fat man bounced up and down on his toes. “If you think I’m holding still for—”

“Shut your mouth, Jack,” Max Stitt said forcefully. “Let’s go inside.” He turned and walked to a door in the rear of the office. Johnny followed promptly. He noticed that Jack Arends was more hesitant, although the fat man was still sputtering.

The room beyond the door was small and cold and boxlike, illuminated by a single overhead bulb. The floor was springily latticed for drainage, and higher than the office level they’d just left. It was a storage room, not meat-icebox-cold, but chilly enough. “Throw that bar over on the door,” Stitt said to Arends as the fat man stepped inside.

“Now look, Max—” Arends began uneasily, but followed instructions. The tall man’s strange eyes brushed Arends off as something inconsequential and returned to Johnny. Stitt slid easily from the leather jacket, reached in his hip pocket for a heavy pair of gloves and jerked them on. His movements were briskly efficient.

“Arends is getting as fat in the head as he is in the ass,” he said tonelessly to Johnny. “Claude Dechant never sent you anywhere. Jack doesn’t know blackmail when he sees it any more. I’m not going to ask you anything and have you lie to me, friend. In about eight minutes you’ll tell me what you know about Claude Dechant, mismarked symbols and anything else I ask you.” He moved away from the wall, and in the harsh glare of the light Johnny appraised the shoulders that were broader than he would have expected and the attitude that was something more than coldbloodedly professional. Max Stitt looked and sounded like a man who planned to enjoy himself.

“Let—let me out of here!” Jack Arends bleated from behind Johnny. Neither Stitt nor Johnny looked at him. Johnny inched away from the door at his back, still not sure. Stitt’s reaction, as well as the man himself, had surprised him.

Stitt made up his mind for him in a hurry. The tall man charged, hopped into the air from the springy flooring like a lumberjack from a birling log and slashed a heavy boot at Johnny’s groin. Instinctively Johnny avoided the boot, but not the gloved left hand that thudded solidly into his side. Cat-quick, Max Stitt’s right hand ripped at Johnny’s jacket and sport shirt, and buttons flew in all directions. The tall man laughed derisively.

“You’ll eat those,” Johnny promised him grimly, and waded in. A right hand bruised his forehead, a left stung the back of his neck in a vicious rabbit punch, another left knocked him a step off stride. Max Stitt’s hands were lightning fast. In close finally, Johnny barely diverted a jerked-up knee outside his own thigh as he smashed with his left hand at the lithe, hard body. He moved it back ward, but the left caught him again, on the bridge of the nose. He grunted, and his eyes watered. The right stung his cheekbone.

Johnny lowered his head angrily and bulled toward the toe-dancing Stitt, crowding the tall man cornerward although a ripping punch savaged his right ear. “You’ll—carry boot marks—for a month—when I’m finished with you,” Stitt panted as he drove both hands to the body. As though to punctuate the remark, a bronze-capped boot crashed against Johnny’s right shin.

Red spots swirled before Johnny’s eyes. Heedless of everything, he rushed Stitt to the wall. Furiously he closed down his straining hands on the muscular figure, lifted it and slammed it heavily into the wall three times without releasing his grip. The third time Stitt came off the wall limply, head lolling. Johnny relaxed his hold, and Stitt, by sheer strength, raised himself in Johnny’s arms and drove his clasped hands down upon the back of Johnny’s neck. Anything less than that twenty-and-a-half inch expanse might not have weathered it. Ragingly, Johnny heaved Stitt aloft and slammed him floorward. He dropped on him heavily and pinned the still struggling man with his weight.

“Now, damn you—” Johnny looked over his shoulder to locate the babbling sounds coming from Jack Arends. “Pick up—those buttons,” he ordered. “All of ‘em.” He had to repeat it between harsh breaths before he got through to the white-faced fat man, who scrambled awkwardly over the floor in compliance. “Dump ‘em in his mouth when I open it,” Johnny commanded, and pulled on Stitt’s nostrils ferociously, until his mouth opened. “Now chew, you bastard,” Johnny told him as Jack Arends backed away, saucer-eyed. “So far I left your face alone, but if you don’t chew I’ll break your jaw in seventeen places.”

The cold eyes stared up at him an instant, and then Max Stitt chewed. The crunch of the bone buttons was the only sound in the room, except for the heavy breathing. All the fight had finally drained from the man on the floor. Johnny raised his own hands cautiously to his face. The heavy gloves had felt like clubs. His skin neither cut nor bruised easily, but Johnny knew that he bore marks.

He got abruptly to his feet, and Jack Arends scuttled away in alarm. Johnny paid no attention to him. He picked up Stitt’s leather jacket and slipped into it. It was far too small in the shoulders, but it covered the torn shirt and missing buttons. Behind him, Max Stitt crawled to a corner, gagging.

His hand on the slung-over bar on the door of the storage room, Johnny looked back at Jack Arends. “The name’s Killain. I’m at the Duarte. You got that? I got something to sell. Bring cash when you come.”

The fat man was staring, awe-stricken, at Stitt in the corner. “He’ll kill you,” he said nearly in a whisper. “He’ll kill you for this.”

Johnny threw over the bar and walked out without a backward glance.

• • •

Gus Poulles, Johnny’s counterpart on the day shift, handed him two telephones chits when he walked into the hotel. Gus studied Johnny’s face. Johnny had stopped off for hurried repairs en route, but he had a lumped-up cheekbone, a scratched ear and a scraped forehead. “What’s the other guy look like?” Gus wanted to know. He was a pale-faced, black-haired Greek, whose worldly-wise expression perfectly reflected his bored attitude. He tapped the top chit in Johnny’s hand. “If this one looks like the sounds, I’m available for a spare slice off the loaf.”

“If it’s who I think it is, I haven’t dulled my own knife yet,” Johnny grunted. The top chit invited him to call G. Philips at the Spandau number. “Yeah. I’m not plannin’ on makin’ it a long campaign, though.” The second chit suggested that he call J. Tremaine, and the number listed was not the Spandau number. Johnny tossed the bits of paper thoughtfully on his palm. “Thanks, Gus,” he said, and headed for the lobby phone booth.

He called Gloria’s boss first. “Jules Tremaine,” he said to the high-pitched voice he knew at once was not the redhead’s.

“Mr. Tremaine will return your call immediately, sir. Your number, please, Mr.—” the voice inquired rapidly.

“Killain,” Johnny said after a second, and supplied the booth phone number. He waited, puzzled. What kind of a gag was this? He sat there for five minutes, and was just about to dial the Spandau number when the phone rang. He grabbed the receiver. “Yeah?”

“Killain? That matter you mentioned at the office. Why don’t you go to see Madeleine Winters?”

“I don’t know her address,” Johnny replied truthfully. Score one for the redhead, he thought. She called this one right on the nose.

“2-0-4 East 66th. You knew that she’s the widow of Dechant’s former partner, whose sudden death two years ago was extensively investigated?”

“I know she’s still walkin’ around,” Johnny answered.

“Nothing could be proven. She’s a clever, ruthless woman.”

“Am I supposed to be pullin’ chestnuts out of the fire for you because you don’t like her?” Johnny asked in simulated doubt. “‘Course, if you tell me she’s got no inexpensive sins—”

“There is nothing about Madeleine Winters that is inexpensive,” Jules Tremaine said positively. “Ah—Killain. I’d like to talk to you. Privately. Not at the hotel. The attention you’ve drawn to yourself, you’ve probably got more people watching you than the Surété has agents.”

“You name it,” Johnny suggested.

“My place, I guess,” Tremaine said after a second. “Tonight. Latish, though. About midnight?”

“Suits me,” Johnny agreed. “I’m a night bird. Where’s your roost?”

“At the unfashionable Hotel Alden,” Tremaine said drily.

“I’ll see you,” Johnny told him, and hung up. He dialed the Spandau number as quickly as he could get a dime out. There was something he wanted to know. “Your boss around, little sister?”

“Johnny? He just rushed out of here when his answering service called him. I thought it might be you he was calling back.”

Johnny ignored the implied question. “He doesn’t trust his little secretary?”

“He trusts Jules Tremaine.” Her tone changed. “What happened over at Empire?”

“If you know somethin’ happened, you should know what it was,” Johnny pointed out.

“I only caught snatches. Jack called, nearly in hysterics. I heard your name.”

“Arends hysterics easy. Where’d you learn French and Italian?”

“I went to school in Switzerland. You learned French in the South, didn’t you? I could hear that soft Provençal accent.”

“Marseilles.”

“I thought so. Mine is the
accent du nord
. Jules’ is Parisien. Although his English is Britishy. Did you know he speaks seven languages?” Her tone changed again. “Stop distracting me. What happened?”

“You could call Max Stitt,” Johnny suggested.

“I’m not speaking to Max Stitt.”

“Then it wouldn’t break you all up to hear that he ran into a little hard luck?”

“The only thing that would break me all up is that I wasn’t there to see it.” Gloria Philips made no effort to disguise the malice in her tone, or the impatience. “What
happened?”

“Well, he come waltzin’ out of the chute with his front hoofs in the air before I got to say a word. At his age he should be a little more careful of the matches he makes for himself.”

“Max Stitt has never had to be careful. He has a reputation for hospitalizing people.”

“What’s he so sudden about?”

“He enjoys it,” the girl said flatly. “He has an appetite for violence. I can’t believe you beat him. Everyone’s afraid of him.”

“Until he run into the hard luck he was way ahead on the score card. He can go.”

“It must have been quite a load of hard luck. Madeleine called me twenty minutes after Jack called Jules, which means that he’d called her, too. She wants to meet you.”

“She a buddy of yours?” Johnny asked cautiously.

Gloria Philips’ laugh was brittle. “She doesn’t even know I’m alive, until she wants something. Right now she wants to meet you. Her Majesty has commanded. I’m to arrange it.”

“What kind of a string’s she got on you?”

“She owns stock in Spandau.”

“How’s she think you’re goin’ to be able to do it?”

“My girlish charm. She knows I met you at the hotel when we found Claude.” She does, does she, Johnny thought. What a nice, tight little community of interests this was turning out to be. “I thought the best way to handle it would be to have her meet us when you pick me up for dinner,” Gloria continued. “If you don’t mind. We can stop off for a drink at her place. She can afford it better than you can.”

“Suits me, if it does you,” Johnny said with pretended indifference. “She’ll meet us at your place?”

“Not in the office. She won’t come within a mile of Jules, if she can help it. He hates her, and she’s deathly afraid of him, although she won’t admit it. I’ll see you at five?”

“You will, little sister. You will indeed.” Johnny replaced the receiver pensively.

The slowly widening ripples from the stone cast into the pool, he thought. The slowly widening ripples …

He left the phone booth and hurried upstairs to change.

J
OHNNY STEPPED FROM THE ELEVATOR
into the stream of people in the lobby of 222 Maiden Lane with Gloria Philips on his arm, and the redhead’s hand tightened on his elbow. “There she is,” the girl murmured. “That’s Harry Palmer with her.”

Johnny looked with interest at the tall, regal-looking blonde in a pastel mink stole who swept up to them, trailed by a short, bouncy, aggressive-looking little man in a dark business suit. “So good of you to be able to make it, darling,” the blonde said crisply to Gloria, semi-enveloping her in the phantom embrace with which women meet in public without ever quite making contact. “And how is dear Ernest these days?”

“Dear Ernest is just fine,” the redhead replied. “Mrs. Winters, Mr. Killain. Mr. Palmer, Mr. Killain.” Johnny was conscious that the eyes of both were upon the marks on his face.

Madeleine Winters was a green-eyed ash blonde, Johnny discovered as he pressed the tips of her fingers, which somehow managed to be the only part of her hand available to be shaken. What he could see of her legs beneath the faille suit were excellent. He suspected that her figure was just as good, if a man held no prejudice against the greyhound type.

Harry Palmer’s handshake was firm and surprisingly strong. “Glad to meet you, Killain,” he said buoyantly. Confident good humor quirked the corners of his wide mouth. Johnny felt the transfer of a bit of cardboard from the little man’s hand to his own. He palmed it as Palmer turned to Madeleine Winters. “Now that I’ve done the honors, my dear, I’ll be running along.”

“Certainly, Harry.” The blonde smiled at him cozily. “And thanks for being so sweet about escorting me.” She addressed herself to Gloria as the little man strode jauntily away. “You won’t mind that I’ve asked Jack Arends to join us for a drink at my place? I feel he can add so much to the gathering.” Madeleine Winters smiled again.

“I don’t mind in the least,” Gloria replied. She disengaged her arm from within Johnny’s. “I’m going to have to hold you up a moment, though. I’ve forgotten my little case with my homework. Excuse me, please?” She stepped back onto the elevator as she spoke.

For a second Johnny thought it might have been an arrangement to leave him alone with Madeleine Winters, until he saw that lady’s expression as she stared at the elevator’s closed door. In the lobby’s harsh overhead light, tiny crow’s-feet radiated from the eyes but only slightly negated a very good complexion. She was older than the redhead, Johnny thought, but it would take a woman to appraise the difference.

Suddenly conscious of his eyes upon her, Madeleine Winters showed her teeth in what was not quite a smile. “Extraordinary girl, Gloria. Isn’t there something in the natural history books with tentacles ending in claws?”

“Not since the Ice Age,” Johnny said.

“A prehistoric background would suit her nicely,” the blonde said acidly. “But I shouldn’t prejudice you on your first date.” Johnny again saw the flash of her even white teeth. “You must tell me all about it some time. I adore naughty stories.”

“You don’t pull many punches, do you, Mrs. Winters?”

“Madeleine, please.” The green eyes inspected him searchingly. “If I don’t, I understand I’m in good company. Max Stitt is not considered an easy man to handle.”

“His foot must’ve slipped.”

“Why did you go to see—” She broke off as the elevator ejected Gloria, attaché case under her arm. “We can always get into that later, can’t we?” The blonde smiled at Johnny. The smile evaporated as she turned to the redhead. “You’re quite sure you’re ready now, darling?”

“Quite sure,” Gloria returned evenly, drawing on white gloves. Johnny followed them through the lobby’s revolving doors onto the sidewalk. Brother, he thought to himself, if there’s a lamb in this crowd its name is Killain.

Facing away from the women with his arm upraised for a cab, Johnny was able to take his first look at the business card Harry Palmer had pressed into his hand. Beneath the block-lettered name it said
Heritage Building
, in the upper left hand corner
Factoring
, in the lower right
Financing
. Diagonally across its face in a bold, pencil-stabbing scrawl appeared
Drop around and see me
.

Now here’s a money man no one took the trouble to mention, Johnny thought. He slipped the card in a pocket as he opened the taxicab door.

There was only one attempt at conversation during the trip uptown. “I suppose your friend Ernest is busy disentangling Claude’s affairs?” Madeleine Winters inquired.

“I haven’t seen my friend Ernest since that night,” Gloria replied. The balance of the ride was completed in silence. Johnny offered his hand to each as they alighted. He found the double flash of nylon blinding as they scrambled from the low-roofed cab. A uniformed doorman lumbered up belatedly to assist. With what they were able to see all day opening car doors for the ladies, Johnny mused, doormanning should be a fine job for voyeurs.

Inside the canopied entrance the ceiling was twenty feet high, the floor was parqueted, the atmosphere as hushed as a cathedral. The elevator was self-service type with black filigree ironwork adorning it. It rose soundlessly. Key in hand, Madeleine Winters led the way down a thickly carpeted corridor and admitted them to her apartment.

There was no hallway. Johnny stood just inside the door and looked at the rectangular living room filled with bright color. The walls were off-white, the ceiling dull gold. A shaggy white rug covered the floor. A lounge in royal blue ran nearly from wall to wall at the narrow upper end of the room, and a three-quarter sofa bed with a bright gold coverlet angled out from the right-hand wall. A huge bowl of flowers decorated a hi-fi set against the long left wall. Armchairs in azure blue and nile green squatted at the ends of the lounge, with barely enough room for small end tables with thin-stemmed blue lamps on broad brass bases. The blues and greens should have clashed, Johnny felt, but somehow didn’t. A teakwood cabinet rested against the wall opposite the hi-fi. Three doors led off the room, including the one behind him.

“Jack should be along in a moment,” Madeleine said, scaling her stole carelessly at the sofa bed. She indicated the cabinet to Johnny. “Would you do the honors? You’ll find everything you need except ice. I’ll bring it.”

“I’ll run inside to the little girls’ room,” Gloria said. She pointed with her attaché case to the door on the right. “It’s still in there, Madeleine?”

“I haven’t moved it recently, dear,” the blonde said sweetly, and exited through the door opposite. Johnny winked at Gloria, who shook her head in a half smile before disappearing behind the right-hand door. Johnny caught a quick glimpse of a white four-poster bed on another white rug before the door closed.

He opened the cabinet door and ran his eye approvingly down the line of bottles. He removed Scotch and bourbon, and three highball glasses. As an afterthought he took out two Old-fashioned glasses. They might like their drinks on the rocks.

“What’ll it be?” he asked Madeleine as she returned with a small silver ice bucket. At her silence he turned to find her staring at a black fedora and black leather gloves on an end table.

“Jack’s already here?” she murmured half to herself, and raised her voice. “Jack? Where are you, Jack?”

For a second Johnny thought the sound in his ears was a wall-reflected echo of her call. When it was repeated he reached the bedroom door in three long strides and jerked it open. The room was enough to snow-blind a man, he thought as he sprinted through it to the door ajar at its end. Walls, ceiling, rug, bedspread, dresser, boudoir table and bench, lamps, venetian blinds, occasional chairs—all white. Dead white. Behind him he could hear the thud-thud of Madeleine’s heels on the rug.

Gloria stood in the bathroom doorway, attaché case crookedly under one arm, staring down at her feet. “I thought you’d never hear me,” she got out in a cracked, strained voice as Johnny moved her to one side and looked down at Jack Arends’ crumpled, bloated body. The ugly features were blood-streaked, and a black automatic gleamed against glistening tile.

For an instant Johnny felt suspended in time. Was he seeing the same movie twice? So recently he’d looked down upon a body on a bathroom floor with a black automatic lying alongside on white tile. He dropped to one knee as he heard Madeleine Winters’ sharply indrawn breath behind him, and, while he felt for a pulse he knew would not be there, his eye caught up with the differences between this death and Dechant’s. This was no suicide. There were no powder burns, and Arends had been shot more than once. This time it was murder.

“The door was closed,” Gloria said from above him in a small voice. “I opened it, and there he was.”

• • •

Johnny sat with Gloria on the gold sofa bed and listened to Detective Ted Cuneo direct questions at—from the sound of her voice—an increasingly impatient Madeleine Winters. Beside them an anxious-faced Ernest Faulkner tried ineffectually to referee the match, his glasses glinting in the light.

“Why do you suppose Madeleine insisted on callin’ Faulkner?” Johnny asked Gloria.

She shrugged prettily. “At a guess, to embarrass me. I’ve dated him a few times, but I’m afraid he’s taken it more seriously than I have.” The blue-gray eyes were guileless.

Detective James Rogers emerged from the bedroom and approached them. The sandy-haired man looked tired. “I guess that does it inside,” he said mildly. He looked at Johnny. “Run through your end of it again for me.”

“Sure. Gloria an’ I left her office at five. We met Mrs. Winters in the lobby, talked maybe five minutes an’ caught a cab up here. Took us half an hour, maybe.” Johnny glanced at the bedroom door. “He looked fresh enough to have caught it while we were comin’ up in the elevator.”

Rogers’ smile was mirthless. “It wasn’t long.”

Across the room Madeleine Winters’ voice rose stridently. “How many times are you going to ask me that? I told you Jack had his own key! Are you investigating his death or my morals? Ernest, can’t you make this man stop repeating himself?” Johnny could see the fluttering movements of Faulkner’s hands as he tried to talk to the glowering Cuneo.

Gloria tugged at his arm. “Can we leave?”

Johnny looked at Rogers, who nodded after a second’s hesitation. Johnny rose to his feet. From the corner of her eye the blonde caught the movement. “You’re leaving?” she said sharply, interrupting Cuneo in the middle of a question. “I want to talk to you.”

“Give me a ring sometime,” Johnny said easily.

“Mrs. Winters—” Cuneo began doggedly.

“Oh, shut up!” she told him rudely. The tips of the detective’s ears glowed pinkly as she moved away from him to take Johnny by the arm. She drew him aside. “I want to talk to you,” she repeated. “Soon. Can’t you come back later?” She smiled, pure mischief in her eyes. “If you’ve the strength?”

“I think I’d rather tackle it fresh.” Johnny cocked an eye at the bedroom. “That room in there—with your clothes off, doesn’t a man need a search party?”

“The sheets are black,” she assured him. “Black silk.” She smiled again. “Well?”

“Not tonight. You call me.”

“I’m shameless enough,” she admitted. She was looking at him curiously. “I thought you might make it a little easier for me, though. Ah, well.
C’est la guerre
. Have fun.”

Johnny collected the waiting Gloria and led the way out to the elevator. He thought she looked a little wan.

“What did Madeleine want?” she asked him directly.

“A younger man, I guess.” He grinned at the redhead. “She’s lucky we were with her, walkin’ in on that. Alone, she’d have been makin’ her noises at Cuneo downtown. They’re well paired.”

“I don’t know why it shook me so,” she said wearily. “Why are all these people killing themselves?”

Johnny looked at her. “Arends never killed himself.”

“He didn’t? But he looked just the same—”

“As Dechant? With some important differences he looked the same. Arends took four in the head, dead center. A man don’t last to pull the trigger on himself four times, where he took them.”

“He was killed? But the police didn’t say—”

“They never do say, till the M.E.’s report is in, but you can bet me. They know what it was.” The elevator stopped, and the door opened noiselessly. Johnny followed Gloria through the lobby to the street. “Come on. We’ll get you a drink. You need it.” He looked at her hands as she changed the position of the attaché case under her arm. “Forget your gloves? I’ll run back up an—”

“Don’t bother, Johnny.” She tucked her arm in his. “I’m sure I have a pair of suedes in my bag. I’d just as soon forget about up there.” Her eyes were shadowed as she tried to smile up at him.

“Okay. Let’s get that drink.”

He whistled for a cab.

• • •

Johnny sat in a big armchair in Gloria Philips’ apartment in a pleasantly relaxed glow. The dinner had gone off well, and the after-dinner drinks hadn’t hurt anything, either. He sat and awaited the redhead’s return from the bedroom into which she’d gone upon their arrival.

His eyes roamed the room, lazily. Gloria Philips’ apartment was small but neatly furnished. Gloria Philips herself was small but neatly furnished. It made a hard combination to beat, Johnny felt.

“Keep you waiting long?” she asked huskily from the doorway.

He hadn’t heard the door open. “It was worth it,” he said softly. The redhead was wearing something black, fragile, loose, long, clinging and semitransparent. She came directly to him and sat on the arm of his chair. She smiled down at him, the blue-gray eyes bright with liquor and with something else. Johnny pushed back the loose sleeve of the flowing negligee and traced the silken contours of her upper arm with his fingertips.

She bent down over him until her lips rested against one ear. “Did you really move a whorehouse into Silver City?” she murmured.

“I really did.”

She slid down off the arm of the chair into his lap. “Tell me about it.”

He stood up with her dead weight in his arms. “I’ll do better than that, kid,” he told her. “I’ll show you.”