CHAPTER 4

“He dictated this to you?”

“Pretty slick, isn’t it?” Helen Calabrese smiled. She was one up on me with the cocktails, sipping her second martini, smoking her third cigarette and nibbling her eighth canape at the bar. The liquor had loosened her a bit, but it would take a lot to fog her deep wise eyes. “I don’t mean slick in the obvious sense, Steve. I mean he’s thorough, smooth and statistical in the head. All good points for a man in his position. He’s a great one for the documents. He puts everything down in the record, files, and saves. He’d issue an interoffice memo if he stayed too long in the little boys’ room.”

“Methodical,” I said. “You don’t like methodical men?”

“Don’t egg me on,” she smiled. “I’m happy in my work.”

“You seem pretty happy.”

“I do my job and keep my little nose clean and out of other people’s affairs.”

“Of course you do, Helen.”

She was the commercial type, but upper-echelon material, smooth and well-groomed and fussy with the way she mouthed ideas. She belonged in the top bracket of secretarial girls, the sort you see on Madison Avenue and in the still, well-decorated offices of the moneyed moguls. They are of a breed, these females, all of them possessing a certain cold beauty, a trimness, a chic that sets them apart from the hack middle-class secretary so often found in other lines of endeavor. They know their way around and about the executive desks. They sleep only with the important males.

Helen’s name had rung a bell with me the moment I heard it in Silverton’s reception room, weeks ago. Calabrese meant a variety of things in the strange world of sin in New York. Calabrese rang another bell with the police because they would think at once of Luigi Calabrese, the clever little man in the rackets, the peculiarly powerful character who was important enough to testify before a senatorial committee on vice in Washington not too long ago. But the bell Luigi Calabrese rang for me was a more ancient memory gong, dating back to the war, to Normandy, when Luigi and I shared a muddy ditch in the infantry. And every time I entered Silverton’s outer office, that bell rang for me. Because Helen was Luigi’s kid sister.

“How long have you been working for Silverton?” I asked.

“Two years this Christmas.”

“And before that?”

“I worked for brother Luigi before that.” She laughed a rich and uninhibited chuckle. She had certain native qualities that contradicted her surface veneer, the thin polish of show-business civilization. When she laughed, her pretty face lit with a good glow. She had deep black eyes, intense and emotional. “God, Steve, must you always play the detective?” she asked. “Must you always work? Luigi painted you as a man of great spirit—a laughing man.”

“I work when I work, Helen. Right now I’m on an important job. And Luigi knew me when I could afford to laugh a lot.” I handed her Silverton’s report. “What do you make of this prose masterpiece, Helen?”

“It makes sense.”

“Did you know her? Mari Barstow?”

“I’ve met her,” she said. “Do you want my honest opinion?”

“It could help.”

“Mari Barstow is a creep.”

“What does that mean?”

“You know the college she came from? You know the Letitia Blanchard college group? Blanchard caters to odd balls, Steve. Blanchard breeds them, feeds them, nourishes them in all the arts. They come out of that place reeking with crazy culture, a kind of Bohemian background you just don’t find anywhere else. Scratch a Blanchard alumnus and you find a budding goon, an artistic phony. I don’t know what Silverton is worried about, actually. For my money, Mari Barstow could be anywhere on a whim, a sudden itch for travel. It wouldn’t surprise me if she suddenly decided to leave the country for a while.”

“She hasn’t left the country, Helen. In my business that’s the first operation, the routine beginning of my checkup. She neither had a passport nor applied for one.”

“What a brain,” sighed Helen Calabrese. “Have you tried Las Vegas? Atlantic City? Brooklyn? Mari Barstow might have picked any of them for a short vacation.”

“Alone?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Did she have a steady?”

“You’re over my head now,” she laughed. “I never bothered to get her personal history.”

“No gossip?”

“A detective uses gossip?” She smiled artfully, heated now by the martinis, a girl of easy conversational habits when the liquor grabbed hold of her.

“Another drink, Helen?”

“I’ll never be able to work again today.”

“You can blame me for it,” I said. “Tell old Silverton I was grilling you.”

“I’ll tell old Silverton nothing,” she laughed. “Get me that drink, Steve.”

“We were talking about gossip. Office scuttlebutt?”

“Helen Calabrese scuttlebutt.”

“You’ve seen her around?”

“From the very beginning. Mari never exactly hid her pretty light under a bushel.”

“How about her? Is she easy?”

“A cute word,” said Helen. “She was easy for some.”

“Easy for who?”

“You name him—she’s probably had him.”

“Where do I start?”

“Drop me a name, Steve.”

“Silverton, for instance?”

“A good instance.” She sipped her drink, smiling into the glass. “Yes, indeed, Oliver has a strong letch for her.”

“Headstrong or bedstrong?”

“Oliver tried hard.”

“You’re sure of this?”

“A silly question,” she said. “I wasn’t under the bed when it happened, Steve, if that’s what you mean. But you can tell how hot the flame is burning from the way a man handles a gal like Mari. Oliver always looked as if he was about to take a bite of her, if you know what I mean. Can you picture him taking her for a walk under the Fire Island moon? And why was her dress sanded in odd places when they returned from their meandering? And why was Oliver’s face suddenly moonburned and looking alive? Let me put it this way—he made the old Yale try, that’s for sure. And from the look of him, if he didn’t get far with her that night, he would certainly stick with it back in town. Are you with me, detective?”

“Ahead,” I said. “Who else?”

“Arthur Haddon.”

“How sure?”

“Arthur flips when a female he likes passes by. Arthur is outgoing. He should be. He’s had four wives, hasn’t he? When Mari Barstow began to sing, Arthur began to twitch, drool, and take to drink. Out on Fire Island he didn’t have the courage for competing with Oliver Silverton. But you should have seen him when Mari came into the office. He was suddenly nineteen years old and on the merry-go-round. He went after her like a cat after liver.”

“And made it?”

“Arthur has charm, when he’s sober.”

“Are there more, Helen?”

“Jan Flato, of course.” Her voice dropped on the name and she was no longer gay. “Poor Jan, even he got the heaves when she walked on scene.”

“You liked him?”

“Jan was a nice person. A real person.”

“Was he for you?”

“What exactly does that crack mean?” Her eyes snapped and she potted a small alcoholic pout. She tried to stare me under the table.

“I’m only asking, Helen. Did you like him that way?”

“What way?”

“Deep.”

“I liked him. Leave it alone, Steve.”

“You aren’t answering my question,” I said. “Ever date him?”

“Just business fluff,” she shrugged. “Jan was around all the time and my job keeps me in the building a lot, close to the big shows. Jan and I kidded a lot. We ate dinner together. We drank late, once in a while. That’s about it.”

“Did you call him last night, Helen?”

“I did not. And how would you know if I did?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I think you did.”

“And if I did?”

“If you did, why did you?”

“If I did, maybe I was checking on a date.” She put down her glass and said nothing more. She was fighting off a deep and shivering urge to break down, her face clouded with real trouble, her mouth tight. “I waited a long time for him to pick me up. We had a dinner date, Steve. He never came and I hated him for it. Until this morning—the news—”

“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Helen.”

“Get me another drink, Steve?”

“No more now. I don’t want to fracture you, believe me. Can you think of any other males Mari Barstow had on the hook?”

“Only one other that I know. A lad named Jeff Masterson.”

“I’ve heard that name before.”

“A writer. An avant-garde termite. Want to meet him?”

“I can’t wait.”

“You’ll have to wait until tonight. He’s giving a reading of his deathless prose at a hole called Gretchen’s down in the Village. You can take me there. Or would you rather go alone?”

“I’m with you,” I said.

Because I wanted to be.