The Fatal Frails (9 page)

“Thought I’d anyway find you in the penthouse,” Johnny told the little man, who bounded energetically to his feet from the depths of a battered office chair.

“I can buy and sell six times over the boob paying the rent on that penthouse,” Harry Palmer announced snappily, “but does that mean I have to be a boob, too, and give that rent away?” He turned behind him to a door half hidden by leaning plywood panels. “Tiny!” he yelled. “More coffee!” He turned back to Johnny, rubbing his hands together. “We’ll have a hundred per cent occupancy by the first of the month. I’m my own rental agent, too. Why give it away?”

“Who’s your building superintendent?” Johnny inquired, already knowing the answer. He held up a hand. “I know. Why give it away?” He looked at the little man curiously. “You actually tryin’ to run a building this size out of your hat?”

“Why not?” Harry Palmer bristled. “It’s my building.”

“You’re gonna get damn sick of the noise you get,” Johnny predicted.

“I’m sick of it now,” Palmer admitted gloomily, suddenly deflated. “Headaches. Squawks. Oi. You want a job?” he asked, briefly hopeful.

“How can I go to work for a man guns me in the dark just for easin’ him out of a blonde’s apartment?”

“You know goddam well that wasn’t me,” Harry Palmer growled. “Or anyone connected with me.”

“Yeah? Remind me, champ. How do I know it?”

“I’ve got a witness,” Harry Palmer said slyly. “Here he is now.” Johnny looked up to see the big man from the apartment that night come out of the back room with a container of coffee lost in a massive paw. A chauffeur’s cap that looked about the size of a beret perched squarely on top of the bullet head. “Tiny, here’s a friend of yours,” Harry Palmer said gleefully, and moved back out of the way.

“H’ya, Tiny,” Johnny said easily. “Thanks for not makin me look bad in front of the blonde the other night.”

Tiny’s smile displayed snaggleteeth. “Y’got y’self t’ t’ank, buster. I’da done th’ giant swing wit’cha if I’da reached ya.” The man-mountain’s words were hoarse, breathy and run together. “Whachuweigh, Killain?”

“Right at two forty.”

“You go pretty good for a guy don’t weigh no more’n that.” The big man looked at Johnny thoughtfully. “You work out around town a-tall?”

“I go up to the Russian’s once in a while.”

“How d’ya rate with Dmitri?”

“He plays handball with me off the walls.”

“Dmitri don’t get onto the mat with no one he can play handball wit’ off the walls,” Tiny said impassively. He rubbed his chin, looked at the coffee in his hand and set it down on the desk. “Like to try you on again sometime,” he concluded almost absently.

Harry Palmer snorted indignantly. “Aren’t you two going to fight?” he demanded.

“That what you want?” Johnny asked him. “Throw a couple hundred dollars up there on the table.”

“Four hundred,” Tiny stipulated. He smiled his broken-toothed smile. “We’ll split,” he told Johnny.

“You two go to hell.” The jaunty little man moved away from the wall to which he had retreated. “For four hundred I can buy a massacre.”

“For four hundred that’s what we’ll give ya,” Tiny informed him hoarsely. “Right, Killain?” He placed a huge palm, fingers wide-spread, in the center of Johnny’s chest and slowly brought the weight of his shoulder to bear behind it. “Mebbe my foot didn’ slip,” he said reluctantly after a moment. He looked at Palmer. “For four C’s we could fin’ out?”

Harry Palmer shook his head. “Right now I want him healthy,” he said briskly. His face darkened. “So long as I don’t go on hearing about my bushwhacking him in doorways. You just come over here to needle me, Killain?”

“Guy I’m thinkin’ of goin’ into business with gave me your name as a character reference,” Johnny said. “I thought I’d check. Jules Tremaine.”

“That gonif!” the little man exploded. “He never gave you
my
name as a character reference. He knows better. He killed Jack Arends. The damn fool police might not—”

“The damn fool police picked him up an’ questioned him on that. He’s still walkin’ around.”

“That’s why they’re damn fools. He did it,” Palmer insisted stubbornly. “I sent Tiny over there with a picture of him, and the doorman identified him as the man who went upstairs with Jack before you and Madeleine and Gloria arrived. No one saw him leave.”

“Speakin’ of damn fools,” Johnny said drily, “you didn’t stop to think that if the doorman mentioned that to Tremaine it would warn him to spread a little grease around to smear identification? The police had to let him go because they couldn’t get a positive.”

“Is that right?” The little man looked momentarily abashed. “I don’t care,” he said, rallying. “Tremaine killed Jack, and he tried to kill Madeleine. Only thing prevented him was that you opened the door instead. He hates her. It’s—”

“He’s ironclad on an alibi for the time I got nipped,” Johnny interrupted.

“Alibi!” Palmer sneered. “Gloria Philips is his alibi, and when Tremaine snaps his fingers that roundheels falls over backward. Alibi!”

“The police—”

“I don’t give a damn about the police!” Harry Palmer’s graying hair stood up all over his head as he ran an excited palm through it. “They couldn’t find their way out of a paper bag with the sides out. I tell you this Tremaine is no damn good. He’s a cutie, right in Dechant’s class. I had to fire him myself when I had him working for me in Europe. I had to read every report of his three times looking for twists and angles. Even after I’d warned her, Madeleine caught him flimflamming her on a job she’d hired him for in Basel, and she hung him out to dry. He swore he’d get even.”

“Then why would he go to her apartment with Arends?”

“He didn’t know why he was there.” Harry Palmer paused, as though considering. “Jack’s gone now; I guess it won’t make any difference if I tell you. This is a little involved. Jack had this long-time girl friend he’d set up in a lingerie shop down below Herald Square. The place even made a little money.”

He smiled as though at some secret joke. “I don’t know why the hell it is even the smartest guys think they’re putting something over on their wives. The day after the funeral Mrs. Arends didn’t even wait to sell the lingerie shop; she just went down there and turned the key in the door. It’s in a broker’s hands now.” He gestured dismissingly. “Anyway, a couple of years ago Claude Dechant came to Jack and offered to supply him with duty-free perfume, the expensive stuff, for the lingerie shop. The place was a natural outlet for it, Jack went for the idea, and the arrangement continued until Dechant’s death.”

Palmer shook his head wonderingly. “Then a lot of things happened. It turned out Claude had only been the middleman; he picked up the stuff at this end of the line and turned it over to Jack. When Dechant died the purser on the steamer who’d actually been bringing it in had perfume and no place to put it. Somehow he knew that Claude knew Tremaine, and he went to Tremaine. That smart bastard put two and two together and went to see Jack. Among the three of them they got the perfume wheels turning again, but then Jack got hungry.”

Harry Palmer drew a deep breath. “I told you this was involved. Jack went to Madeleine. He wanted her to open up a couple of shops as additional outlets, and he told her why. He never mentioned Tremaine, knowing Madeleine would have run five miles at the sound of his name. Where Jack made his mistake was he didn’t realize Jules felt just as strong the other way. Having a good-sized streak of larceny in her, Madeleine liked the sound of the thing, all except the part about the investment required to open the new shops. Madeleine’s idea is bully for the profit motif, but risk her own capital to obtain it? Don’t be silly, dear man. Madeleine came to a bloke named Harry Palmer.”

The little man leveled a finger at himself. “Right about there was where that shmuck Harry Palmer began to get an idea for the first time of what Dechant had been doing with Palmer’s money that supposedly was being used for legitimate importing. Now you should understand, Killain, that when Madeleine asks me for something, mostly she gets it.” He shrugged. “So I’m a sucker. I’ll probably die of a heart attack in that wide-screen bed of hers one of these days, and it will be damn well worth it. Anyway, this time I turned her down. I’m afraid of the Treasury Department, and before I’d finished talking to her she was afraid, too. She went back and told Jack no dice, but Jack wasn’t the type to give up that easily. I figure he brought Tremaine over there to try a little head-knocking. When he gave Tremaine the pitch to warm him up, Tremaine blew his stack, particularly that Madeleine of all people should have been told of the original operation. I think he threatened to pull out altogether, right there, that Jack got a little ugly and Tremaine a damn sight uglier. Tremaine blasted Jack, and took off.”

Armagnac, and now perfume, Johnny thought. Jules Tremaine was fast getting to be a boy tycoon. Johnny grinned at Harry Palmer. “So you didn’t like the perfume business? I wonder how you’ll like the liquor business?” He started backing to the door.

“Liquor business?” Palmer asked puzzledly. His eyes widened as he noted Johnny’s flank exiting. “Hey! I want to talk to—”

“I’m late,” Johnny said from the doorway. He wanted none of the little man’s shrewd questions right now.

“Damn it, Killain! There’s a couple of things—”

“Drop over and see me, Harry.” Johnny went up the passage at a fast walk, with Palmer’s irritated bark ringing in his ears.

J
OHNNY AWOKE, WITH A START
, in total darkness. Animal instinct told him that he was not in his own bed. In the second it took him to claw his way back to full consciousness he realized that what had awakened him was a round knee in the small of his back. In the same second he knew where he was.

“Awake?” Gloria Philips’ husky voice murmured in his ear.

“Yeah.” He was wide awake, and shaken. “Listen, kid. Don’t wake me like that again. Some things I do by reflex. You wouldn’t appreciate it.”

“Well—” she said, pouting, “you must admit it’s not very flattering, having you fall asleep like that. Cigarette?”

“Yeah. An’ I can sleep anywhere.”

“Obviously.” She sat up beside him, and he heard the double click-click of her lighter as it misfired once before catching. In its sudden flare he saw the long, curving sweep of bare shoulders and back, and the frown of concentration on the beautiful ivory oval of her features as she lighted two cigarettes at once. Golden freckles splashed lightly on the milky skin down to the full white breasts, then vanished. “Here.” She handed him a cigarette, snapped off the lighter and lay down beside him again. “The carpet’s the ashtray.” She turned restlessly onto her side. “I’m about ready to move out of here, anyway.”

“Seems comfortable enough,” Johnny said lazily. He folded his hands behind his head.

“I want
style,”
Gloria said emphatically. She punched her pillow with a soft thump. “I want an apartment like Madeleine’s, but paid for by me. I like independence.”

“You should’ve gotten your name on the list for some of Claude’s variations on the theme,” Johnny told her. He turned his head to try to see her face. “Or did you?”

“Sometimes I wonder what you think you know,” the soft voice said resentfully. “And sometimes I wonder if you know anything at all. How much time do you think Claude had for me with Madeleine all over him all of the time?”

God pity the man if he’d been burning
that
candle at both ends, Johnny thought to himself. Even a bullet in the head might have seemed like sweet, sweet peace. Max Stitt had said that Claude Dechant had lacked perspective where women were concerned. Johnny remembered the importer’s face as he had seen it that last night at the registration desk, worn and weary. “What I saw of him, I’d have thought Dechant stressed the dollar sign,” Johnny said lightly. “But then I guess you ladies saw another side of him.”

“After
we saw the dollar-sign side,” the redhead said grimly. “Speaking personally, anyway. Of course I’m not qualified to speak for the chief whore.”

He was surprised at the venom in her tone. “Strong language for a stockholder of the company that hires you,” he suggested.

“I hate her!” Gloria Philips sat up and drummed on her knees with clenched fists. “I’ve always hated her. That sneaky smile of hers, the cat-that-just-swallowed-the-canary look, the things she says about me she doesn’t think I know. If it wasn’t for that stinking money of hers, she’d be nothing but a skinny, washed-out, peroxided bitch.” Her tone changed. “Money,” the redhead said softly. “That’s what I want.”

“So what’s the master plan? Marryin’ Palmer? Or Tremaine?”

“Palmer!” she sniffed. “The blonde has him wrapped around her little finger. “And Jules has no money.” She said it impatiently. “Jules and I understand each other, but Jules has no money.” She stretched out on her back again. “I had hopes for you when you first came bursting into view,” she said sulkily. “But you talk, and talk, and nothing happens. I wouldn’t have thought one little bullet in the side would have so discouraged a great big man like you.” Irony flavored her tone.

“You never know, do you?” Johnny said amiably. “You don’t hate the blonde so much you’d give Tremaine an alibi he wasn’t entitled to for that job, would you?”

The glowing tip of her cigarette described a flashing arc as she turned to try to see his face. “How did you know—” The anger ebbed from the husky voice. “Not that it matters, since you do. Anyway, it wasn’t Jules who did it. I can vouch for that.”

“You did,” Johnny pointed out. “It helped him. Who’s your candidate?”

“Max Stitt.” Gloria said it with no hesitation at all. “Although he didn’t mean it for you. He meant it for Madeleine.”

“You don’t like Stitt, either, so—”

She interrupted him. “My not liking him hasn’t a thing to do with it. He tried to kill her because he knew she’d turned him and Claude in to customs a month ago.”

“On this unchanged-over symbol business?”

“No. I told you before that Stitt had nothing to do with that. This was much more elaborate. Three months ago Claude bought ten thousand cheap watch movements in Switzerland. Packed five hundred to a case, it made twenty cases. On a big shipment like that, the customs inspectors spot check. That is, they’ll open each case, but they won’t examine each movement. They might look at the whole top layer of one case, and on the next they might remove the top layer without checking it and check one movement in each succeeding layer all the way to the bottom of the case. Now suppose you knew that a customs team would inspect all the even-numbered cases by checking the top layer only, and all the odd-numbered cases by checking the bottom layers only, what would you do?”

“Put the biggest diamonds I could buy in each of the movements I knew wasn’t going to be checked, I guess,” Johnny said drily.

“Or at least substitute a very expensive movement for the cheap ones,” Gloria agreed. “There’s no difference in size.”

“But there’s a big difference in the duty. That must have run into some money,” Johnny said thoughtfully. “Why the hell would she turn them in on it?”

“Because they tried to pull it off without saying a word to her, and it had been her idea originally. She had had the first contact with the air-customs team, and the word got back to her. She just didn’t realize they’d find out where the tipoff came from. In some manner that I don’t understand Stitt was in the clear, but Claude would have been indicted.”

Johnny threw back the covers, sat up on the edge of the bed and stretched slowly. He began to dress. “You think that’s why he killed himself?”

“If he knew, I think it very likely. It would have been the end of the line. I don’t see how he could have known, though, just off the Swiss plane as he was.”

Johnny thought of the importer standing at the desk the night of his return and separating one letter from his stack of mail. Had the police ever found that letter? “The shipment was knocked off?”

“Impounded under Treasury seal in a government-bonded warehouse. Forty-two thousand dollards of Harry Palmer’s dearly beloved money tied up.”

“How is it that you know all—” Johnny began, and stopped. “Oh, sure. Dear Ernest is still unravelin’ the kinks. It must be aging the poor boy.” He bent over and groped for his shoes. “Put the light on, will you?” He blinked in the soft rush of light. The shoes tied, he turned to the bed to find Gloria Philips chastely beneath the spread, her blue-gray eyes steadily upon him.

“You don’t have the monstrance,” she said suddenly. “I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. You should have told me. I’ve been wasting time. Since I thought you had it, I wasn’t watching anyone else. If you’d told me, I could probably have steered you to it by now.”

Johnny stared down into the wise eyes. “You’re with me, is that it?”

Her upper lip curled. “If I’m with you, it’s because nobody else is with me. I couldn’t get a dime out of the whole crowd put together.” She smiled at him. “Faint hope is better than no hope. You’re my faint hope. But you should have told me.”

“If you’re right, I should have told you.”

“I’m right,” she said confidently.

“Dechant was really overboard on the blonde?”

She was suddenly angry again. “It was almost pathological, the hold she had on him! I’ve never—”

“Okay, okay. Don’t blow your boiler, little sister. Thanks for the entertainment. Send me a bill sometime.”

“No need.” She stretched luxuriantly beneath the spread, her smile impish. “My accountant says it comes under tax-deductible depreciation of a business asset.”

He had to smile. “Now I’ve heard it called everything. Toodleoo, queenie.”

“Johnny!” she called from the bedroom when he had a hand on the doorknob in the hall. He went back and looked in the door. She was kneeling up in the bed. “If you find out anything, call me,” she said earnestly. “I might have an idea that could help.”

“You never know,” Johnny agreed, and retraced his steps. In the corridor he looked at his watch and avoided the elevator. He ran lightly down the stairs.

The night air was mild. The stars were out, he noticed. Warm day tomorrow. Make that hot Tough on night workers trying to sleep. Not as—

His feet did an instinctive shuffle to put himself on balance as a dark shadow detached itself from the building wall and loomed up in his path. “What are you doing snooping around up there, Killain?” Jules Tremaine demanded in a tight, hard tone. Even in the comparatively poor street light Johnny could see the heavy scowl on the handsome face.

“I didn’t see any claim stakes on the property up there,” Johnny told him. “What’s your beef with me, Frenchie?”

“You’re too damned nosy!” Tremaine said violently. “And she’s worse, playing both ends against the middle. I should never have said a word to you.”

“Maybe you’re makin’ sense to you, but you’re sure as hell not to me,” Johnny said. “Take your troubles to the chaplain, sonny. Now get out of the way.”

“When I’m ready,” the Frenchman said deliberately. “First—”

“First, hell!” Johnny said abruptly, and drove a shoulder into the big man, who staggered backward half a dozen steps.

“Merde!”
Tremaine growled, and bounded forward. His hand flashed from the pocket of his jacket, and his arm swung at Johnny’s head. Johnny ducked, but not far enough. Something heavy struck him a glancing blow on the scalp and knocked him into the apartment building wall. He came off it with a muttered sound, deep in his throat, and grabbed Jules Tremaine by the forearms before the big man could swing again. Tremaine gasped and whitened as Johnny’s hands clamped down on his arms. There was a clatter of metal as the gun in the big man’s hand fell to the street.

“Break it up! Break it up over there!” Detective James Rogers ran across the street, his lightweight panama pushed back on his head. “Let go of him, damn it!” he said to Johnny, and Jules Tremaine slumped loosely against the building as Johnny reluctantly complied. “What the hell’s going on here?” Rogers demanded. He stooped and picked up the gun. “You got a permit for this thing?”

Tremaine nodded. “Hip pocket,” he said weakly.

Rogers stared. “Then get it out—” he started, and stopped. “Turn around,” he said shortly. He slipped Tremaine’s wallet from his back pocket as the Frenchman obeyed. The detective thumbed through it rapidly, removed a stiff, folded paper and deliberately put it and the gun in his pocket. “You come by the station in the morning and we’ll see if you still have one.” He restored the wallet. “Now take off.” Without a word Jules Tremaine stumbled up the street.

“You followin’ me or him, Jimmy?” Johnny wanted to know.

Detective Rogers’ eyes were still on the man moving away from them. “Look at him. Can’t lift his hands to his beltline. Might be able to comb his hair in about three days.” He swung on Johnny indignantly. “I swear you ought to be under lock and key.”

“I’m supposed to stand still while he works out on my head with that iron?” Johnny asked irritably.

“And why was he working out on your head?”

“Jealous, I guess. Only reason I know.”

“That’s a likely damn story. Where did you come from just now?”

“So it was Tremaine you were followin’,” Johnny said with satisfaction.

“I asked you a question! And another one is what is this man’s connection with Dechant?”

Johnny shrugged. “Damned if I know. Oh, I’ll grant you I got three, four people all lyin’ to me from different directions about his connection and theirs, but as far as the truth is concerned right this minute I don’t know up from sideways.”

“But if you knew you’d be happy to tell me, of course?” the detective inquired sweetly. Hands on hips, he surveyed Johnny crustily.

“You know it, Jimmy. Say, you remember that letter of Dechant’s I told you to look for? The one he seemed to give special attention to the night he came in? You guys ever find it?” He grinned at Rogers’ silence. “I see you did. Was it a letter to the effect that a certain shipment had been impounded and put in a government warehouse by the customs?”

“There was no letter.” Rogers paused, and seemed to be tasting the flavor of what he’d just said. “Where are you getting your information, Johnny?”

“Right now, from you,” Johnny said promptly. “You wouldn’t kid me? There almost had to be a letter.”

“There was no letter,” the detective repeated. He looked at Johnny steadily. “It was a newspaper clipping.”

“Ahh,” Johnny said softly. “What a body blow that must have been to the master thief. All the years with never a bruise to show for it, and he stands there reading that and sees himself hung from a hook in the icebox. He couldn’t take it. When I stood there in his room and hollered ‘Food an’ visitors’ to him in the bathroom, he might not even have looked. He just went for the gun in the dressing gown an’ dented his brain.”

“Who was in with him on the deal, Johnny?”

“You want hearsay?”

“It could be better than what I have.”

“I was
told
—” Johnny emphasized the word—”that it was Max Stitt.”

Rogers looked surprised. “That’s not what I expected to hear.”

“ ‘Course it wasn’t, if you’re followin’ Tremaine. How come you turned loose of him so quick just now?”

“Maybe it wasn’t Tremaine I was following, Johnny.” Amusement glinted in the hazel eyes.

“Then the next place you can follow me is back to the hotel,” Johnny said. “The boat’s leavin’ right now.”

“I may be over later,” the detective said easily. “Don’t let me keep you.”

Johnny turned away a little uneasily. He walked up to the corner, and stood there undecided. If Rogers stepped inside the apartment building and saw G. Philips on a mailbox—hell, Johnny reminded himself impatiently, Jimmy had her address anyway. That ever-present little notebook of his must have told him in whose neighborhood he’d found Killain and Tremaine at each other’s throats. And, if Rogers decided to go up there and talk to her about it, there sure as hell wasn’t anything Killain could do to prevent it. And, for that matter, he’d wager that G. Philips was perfectly capable of holding her own.