CHAPTER 3

The Champagne Room was loaded.

Over a thousand customers squeezed and squinted over the tiny tables surrounding the great stage. The place swam with activity, as hectic as anything of this size in the big city, a night club of gigantic proportions, a hive of humming, buzzing guests who sipped their drinks and sat back for the big name entertainment that was part of their stay at The Montord. The room had class and quality, well designed and equipped with the latest ideas from the planning board of Jon Suchon, the leader in such architectural mumbo-jumbo in New York. Suchon had outdone himself here. On the right, the platform before the bar was rimmed with a giant yellow curtain, drawn now to keep out the lobby noises. Behind the last row of tables, a huge glass window revealed the bar, complete with its usual quota of flies, all of whom faced the club and watched the show from back there where a pair of loud speakers brought the music and dialogue to them. Inside The Champagne Room, the band was skimming through a medley of the latest hit parade items, soft and low, like a good recording played under a blanket. Then the house lights were dimmed and a great spotlight hit the mike at the front of the stage, and Manny Erlich walked out and introduced the first act, a magician named Forando, complete with black cape and several decks of cards.

“Here we go again,” Manny said, joining me in the wings. “This is the show to top them all, Steve. It’ll murder the people.”

Manny was right. They were eating it up out there. And Manny watched and listened, casing the place with the eye of an expert, cocking his head to catch the depth of the applause, adding it all up and finding the sum satisfying.

Manny burned with the festering ambition that plagues some small men and drives them onward and upward to the heights. Manny wanted fame. Manny wanted notoriety. He had neither, but his job at The Montord was the first big step up the ladder. He was a short and dapper ex-hoofer who had worked his way through the borscht circuit until he managed to wangle the job of production man at The Montord. Here he would have the chance to show his skill, to prove to the fancy folk who came to The Montord that Manny Erlich had more than enough know-how for Broadway, or television, or even Hollywood.

I had met Manny in his hungry days, when he prowled the pavements in New York in search of a quick club date or a quicker pastrami sandwich. I saw Manny often when business sidetracked me into the corned beef lanes of Broadway, into the lox and bagel counters and delicatessen hangouts where showfolk came to eat and gossip during the gray hours of the morning; Sam’s, The Stage, Harry the Horse’s Sportsman, and a little known dive run by a middle-aged frump named Tantah Becky. Manny was easy to know, especially around the eateries, where he gouged many a free bagel from his friends. He came from Flatbush and was unashamed of his background and proud of his dancing feet. But his dance routines were earning him bubkehs, and that was why the little man was trying so hard to make good up here.

Manny stood beside me now, grinning through the gloom in the wings, smiling out at the brilliantly lit stage and smacking his lips at Forando as the famous magician killed the audience with his cigarette tricks. Then the drums rolled and the cymbals crashed and Forando bowed and stepped off, rocking the house with applause.

Manny winked as the magician passed toward the dressing room.

“Great, Steve?”

“Forando is terrific,” I said. “Top talent, Manny.”

“You think he’s good, wait’ll you see the rest of my bill. Can you imagine how this crowd will eat up Margo Lewis?”

“She’ll kill them.”

“And Buddy Binns, what’ll he do to them?”

“Not Buddy Binns, too?” Manny was leaning into me and chuckling and clucking his satisfaction at the news he had handed me. Buddy Binns was incredible at The Montord. I could see one star like Margo Lewis on the bill, a doll who would get the top rates for the one night stand in this neck of the woods. But Buddy Binns! Buddy was the biggest name in comedy these days, the number one boy on television and radio and the movies. His meteoric rise had startled the old-line comics and rocked Broadway last year, when he jumped into prominence after a few guest spots on television. Buddy Binns would paralyze this crowd, and Manny Erlich knew it and was letting me in on the big surprise.

“Buddy Binns, in person,” Manny said, and rubbed his hands with delight. “Tonight only.”

“How do you do it?” I asked. “How do you seduce the big ones up here, Manny?”

“Old friends,” Manny grinned. “Pals of mine.”

“Is there anybody in show business you don’t know?”

“Not breathing, there isn’t. But don’t say I seduce them, Steve. That word has a dirty smell. You take Margo, for instance. She’s a doll who’s on the way up, all the way to the top. This fall, Hollywood. But do you know why she comes here?”

“The loot?”

“Money is only money,” he laughed. “But Margo don’t operate strictly for the pocketbook, because she’s got Don Trask handling her. A man with vision. Don knows that the people in this audience made Margo.”

“Don’t tell me she’s another wren who got her start on the borscht?”

“I was referring to television,” Manny explained. He stepped nimbly to one side, to make room for the dancing Chukas, who skipped before us and hit the stage in time for the vamp from the orchestra. “Margo got her start a year ago, in television, on a show called The Band Stand, remember? It was a local deal, strictly for the New Yorkers. Well, who are the New York televiewers, I ask you? These people up here are the set owners, Steve. They’re the ones who wrote her the fan mail and built her into a celebrity. That’s the reason Don Trask gave me for booking her here. Smart?”

“It smells from herring,” I said.

“You don’t believe it?”

“Frankly—no.”

Then Manny eyed me with his professionally frigid stare, the look he reserved for small-time acts who wanted booking up here. But the grimace died and his leathery face broke into an uncontrollable burst of laughter. He pulled me gently off to the side into the shadows. He jerked his head this way and that in an exaggerated gesture, indicating that what he had to say was confidential. Then he leaned my way and said, “You and me both, Steve. I didn’t believe it either. I got the surprise of my life when Don Trask offered to bring Margo up here for this weekend. She could have had any club date in the country. Instead, she comes up here to me. I admit I’m a smart operator, Steve. I can work a deal as sharp and coy as the next Broadway bum. But this deal is really for the birds. I got Margo, but the real surprise came a day later when Buddy Binns told me he was coming up here with her.”

“You stepped into it, Manny,” I told him. “If you were walking in a cow pasture, you’d step only on the buttercups.”

Manny laughed, “I guess you’re right. You know why I got so lucky?”

“Is it something new?”

“I mean to get Buddy Binns with her.” Manny licked his lips and readied his mobile face for another of his deep and stirring secrets. “It’s because Buddy’s rubbing knees with her this season. He’s off his rocker about that doll, believe me. He’d follow her anywhere, even to Grossinger’s, they tell me.”

He continued to chatter, but he only held my ear now. My eyes were skidding and skimming over the audience, at the interesting tableau near the ringside tables. Grace Lasker was sitting up front, and her face seemed suddenly old and tired as she watched the dancing Chukas. She was sitting with Buddy Binns, turning to him and talking to him, but getting nowhere with him Nowhere at all. Buddy was giving her the side of his fat head. Buddy Binns was a caricature of an egomaniac, a violation of all the laws of comedy and good humor. Off the stage, his features were perpetually set in a deadpan mask of open boredom, as stimulating as a dirge—and twice as mournful. He had a fine and open disdain for humanity when he was out of the spotlight and among his admirers. Even now, surrounded by gaping, adoring worshipers, Buddy neither laughed nor blinked. He drifted on his personal cloud, somewhere high in the stratosphere, above the common herd. Mrs. Lasker sat close to him and reached for his arm and touched it. But he did not seem to be listening to her.

I tugged at Manny’s sleeve. “Who’s the broad talking to Buddy?”

“Never saw her before.”

“She seems to know Buddy pretty well.”

“Buddy knows a million of them.” Manny grunted and sniffed at the table where the great comic sat. “But this doll is new to me, Steve.”

“Her name is Grace Lasker. Does that ring a bell?”

“Lasker? Lasker? Isn’t there a big ladies’ underwear Lasker in New York?”

“She’s his wife. Does that mean anything?”

Manny Ehrlich’s face wasn’t designed for serious or intricate thought. He sucked at his lower lip and made feeble fumblings into his memory. He shook his head and gave me nothing.

“Never saw her before in my life, Steve.”

Over his shoulder, I watched Buddy Binns and Grace Lasker. She was getting nowhere with him—but fast. He got up suddenly and threaded his way quickly to the right of the room, toward the bar, where he disappeared behind the great curtain. His sudden leave-taking seemed to shock her. She lifted her glass and gulped the drink, waved to the waiter and began a nervous finger-tapping until he brought her a fresh glassful. She finished this one with the same purposeful speed and left the table, walking in the direction Buddy Binns had taken. Before the yellow curtain, Don Trask met her and she paused to talk to him. Was she sobbing as he led her away? I stared hard over the heads of the audience and picked the two of them up again, seated at the bar now, where Don Trask went through the motions of ordering still another drink for her. They were a clearly defined couple through the brightly lit glass that separated the bar from The Champagne Room. Don Trask leaned close to her as she moved her pretty mouth in animated conversation. Then she left him. She said a word or two and dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief and walked slowly toward the door to the lobby. What was she sobbing about? The urge to follow her and perhaps comfort her gnawed at me. But you don’t just stroll away from Manny Erlich. He had my arm and he had my ear and he was jerking me around so that I could catch the approach of Margo Lewis.

And she was worth waiting for.

She crossed the rear of the backstage area and walked our way. Beautiful? This doll was something out of a good dream, complete with technicolor. There are all kinds of broads in the Broadway lexicon, the cheap and the hard, the varnished and the virginal. Margo Lewis didn’t fit into any of the usual categories. She was high voltage. She wore a red evening gown, cut low where the cut did good, and the dress was something poured around her lush figure, so that the highlights glistened and burned with every step she took. She had a classic head, a little on the dark side, burning eyes and raven hair. Her lips were full and ripe and she seemed to pout perpetually. But when she smiled, it was like fifty million volts over Broadway.

And she was smiling at me and saying, “A real live detective, Manny?”

“One of the best,” Manny said, giving me his usual buildup, complete with the theatrical pounding on the back. “Steve Conacher is the champ, for my dough.”

She shook my hand. “I’d love to talk to you, Steve. I read a murder novel every other night.”

“Better stick to the fiction,” I told her. “In real life, it’s just bread and butter, a way to earn a fast buck.”

“I don’t believe you,” she laughed. “You detectives are all modest that way. I’ll bet you’ve got lots of swell stories.” She eyed the stage, watching the dancing Chukas break into their final frantic leaps before their exit. She smoothed her dress and patted her hair and went through the usual nervous gestures most stars suffer before taking the first step on to the stage. But she had good control. She managed a provocative little laugh and gave me her eyes again. “Maybe we can talk—after the show?”

“Fine,” Manny said. “I’m going to have a place reserved for the whole gang, just the people in the show, Margo. Over in the summer house, near the lake. Buddy’s idea.”

“Wonderful,” Margo said. She was talking to me with her eyes. “See you later, Steve?”

“I’ll be around.”

“In the summer house?”

“Of course Steve’ll be there,” Manny said quickly. “You didn’t think I’d leave him out?”

“I want him to be there,” Margo said.

The band ripped into the finale for the Chukas, and then they were galloping off and returning for a bow and backing off again, sweating and puffing. Margo set herself and waited. The band rolled into a slow and simple rhythm and she walked on and brought a tidal wave of applause from the expectant audience. She began to sing. She used her body, accented by a bright spotlight, moving her hips in a dignified grind that matched the mood of the torchy ballad she was giving them. And when she moved, it was magic out there. She had a deep and throaty voice and the combination of song and gesture reached out and grabbed at the people. She was a living symbol of the seductress, the sultan’s favorite, a modern temptress. She was sex and music in one impossible package, so potent and thrilling that even the hard and cynical eyes of Manny Erlich went damp and bright as he watched her. She had him tied in knots and I could feel the strong impact of her lustful voice pounding my blood and doing strange things to my libido. And then Manny’s hand was on my arm.

“Did you ever hear anything like her, Steve?”

“She’s dynamite,” I said. “She’ll blow Hollywood wide open.”

“That’s what the wise dough is saying.”

“And what is Buddy Binns saying?”

“She’ll drop him,” Manny said, with a shrug. “She’s major league stuff. Buddy won’t be able to hold her long.”

“Who could? She’s Tallulah Bankhead with a voice.”

“And a body.”

“I thought she and Buddy were getting married,” I said. “Read it in Variety a few weeks ago.”

“Never,” Manny said, with a grunt. “Buddy gave that item out himself, by way of his own press agent. When Don Trask saw it in print he almost blew a gasket.” Manny nudged me and gave me a significant wink. “After all, Don had ideas of his own. Don figured maybe he was making time with Margo.”

“And was he?”

“Who knows? Margo has other boyfriends, too. You want a list of them, you’d better get a pad and pencil and ask Margo. She likes the boys.” And he laughed out loud. “All the boys, Steve. You understand what I mean?”

I withheld my comment. From behind us, through the door on the right, Buddy Binns walked our way. He moved with a brisk and bouncy rhythm. His dumpy frame stooped a bit and he buried his hands in his pants, looking for all the world like a worried clothier from the garment district, complete with a scowl and the appropriate corrugations above the eyebrows. Funny? He was as funny as the proverbial crutch, including the dialogue he spouted as soon as he came to rest beside us.

“Conacher,” he said flatly. “The poor man’s Humphrey Bogart. What are you doing up here? Looking for the lost chord?”

“You guessed it, Buddy. And when I find it, I’ll skip rope with it. Funny?”

“My aching back, Conacher.” He turned away from me as though I had just confessed owning the bubonic plague. He riveted his gimlet eyes on Margo and glared and glimmered at her hungrily. He had a surly lip, perpetually pouting and unpleasant when off the stage and among the common people. But the way he looked at Margo added a fresh bright light to his face, making him seem suddenly human. If anybody had told him that he was chewing her up with his eyes, he would have laughed his snotty laugh and denied it. He was not the type to expose himself emotionally, unless a few bright spotlights were beamed at him and he was up there on the stage going through his zany routine. Broadway had murmured in the recent past when Buddy Binns told an early morning disc jockey interviewer the surprising fact that he yearned to do dramatic bits. The wise crowd laughed Buddy out of his secret ambition. But they might have been doing him a great disservice. Buddy needed a steady out for his simmering, deep-seated anxieties. He was fruit for a couch and a long session of analysis. He was as ingrown as a festered hair.

“Funny thing about that doll,” he whispered, still staring at Margo, but not meaning Margo. His eyes glazed with the faraway speculation of the professional introvert. “Damned funny thing, the pitch she threw me a while ago, at the table.”

“What?” asked Manny, confused by his sudden soliloquy. “Who?”

“This little doll who was down there with me at the table,” Buddy said.

“Mrs. V. Lambert?” I asked.

“Didn’t tell me her name, detective.”

“I know her name.”

“Anything you don’t know, peeper?” Buddy asked, without turning my way. It was a habit he had, a personal gesture, a trick he always used when in the presence of unimportant peasants.

“I don’t know what she wanted with you,” I said.

“She didn’t want me, Conacher.”

“You’re just modest, Buddy. She was probably giving you a hot time, lining you up for tonight.”

“You’ve got a dirty mind.”

“Come on, fellows,” Manny said lightly. “Keep it clean. No reason to spit at each other, is there?”

“Like I was saying—” Buddy addressed himself to Manny exclusively, treating me to a close-up angle shot of his broad and beefy behind. “The doll was almost flipping her wig to meet Margo. I’ve seen all kinds of fans, Manny. But this one was something different. She practically worships Margo. Wanted to meet her real bad.”

“Did you fix it?” I asked.

“Of course not,” Buddy snapped. “If we performers had to meet all our fans, where the hell would we get time to sit down, Conacher? They get to be a damned nuisance sometimes.”

“So you gave her the brush?”

“Naturally. I knew Margo wouldn’t have time for her.”

“Nice boy,” I said. “Did it ever occur to you that it might be bad publicity to keep your horde of admirers at arm’s distance? Maybe Margo wouldn’t agree with you, Punchinello. Maybe Margo would want to meet a dame like Mrs. Lambert.”

“That’s Margo’s worry, not yours.” He continued to address his remarks to me by way of the wall ahead of him, letting the words bounce off it and over his shoulder to me. When he finally turned, he managed to nudge me gently, letting me feel the weight of his elbow and the two hundred pounds behind it. “Listen, Manny,” he mumbled, “maybe I better not follow Margo out there. She’s killing the people. It won’t look so good if I go on after her.”

“Not for you, it won’t,” I said.

“What do you think, Manny?” he asked, disregarding me. “You think I’m wrong or right?”

“It was your idea, Buddy.”

“I should have my head examined.”

I said, “That’s the best line I’ve ever heard you use.”

“Drop, please. Dead,” said Buddy Binns. He shuffled around and gave me his tail again, strolling into the shadows as though be might be looking for a lost golf ball back there. He gnawed his lip and made faces at the floor boards. When he returned to us, he had made up his mind. “Manny, do me a favor and count me out tonight?”

“Whatever you say.”

“Maybe I’ll do a routine tomorrow night. Okay?”

“You’re the boss, Buddy.”

Manny was buttering him up, and the sight of anybody playing bootblack to Buddy Binns ripped at my sensibilities. All of a sudden I disliked him so much that I couldn’t stand the sight of him. In my book, a comedian can’t be funny unless he understands the humanities, unless he consorts with the little people and makes an effort to appreciate their souls and their emotions. Buddy Binns neither understood human beings nor cared about them. He operated in a sphere of lofty snobbishness, enclosed by the small and confining wall of his closet-like ego. He would wander forever in the darkness, and all alone, coming out only to accept the glare of the foot lights and heave his zany jokes at the waiting public. He would always please them out there, because the part of him that was the actor knew the tricks and sold them well. But in private life, Buddy Binns could never exist as anything but a stiff pain in the region of the buttocks.

And that was why I walked away from him.

I stepped back into the bar and passed the time of day with Dave, the bartender. A small covey of bar quail gathered on the high stools, making sly talk with the passing males and trying for deeper involvements in the coy, tentative way that young dolls ask for interest. I nursed a Scotch and discussed the customs and mores of The Montord with a shy little dame who had a receding chin and a protruding purpose. The place buzzed and hummed and clattered with alcoholic activity. Paul Forstenburg came by and bought me a couple of drinks. I bought him the same. There was no great urgency for liquor in me, but you can’t stand quietly by in a busy bar without taking a dose with friends. And there were all kinds of reasons for hanging around, once the liquor bit deep enough.

There was Darlene again.

She had been piloting an old porgy around the outside of the glass wall, making feeble passes at me with her bright eyes. She made the grade with him, finally, brushing him off in a burst of fluttery purpose and dashing my way and grabbing hold of me as though I might have been waiting for her. The ancient rhumba maniac scowled and made faces at me and walked off.

“One of your customers?” I asked.

“Buy me a drink, will you?” she said. “That was Edgar Farrishan, the slimiest hotcake on Park Avenue. He practically made me sign a contract to play mattress games with him for a set of lousy mamba lessons.”

“He looked mad enough to spit.”

“The old jerk,” said Darlene, sipping her drink with Latin gentility. “Let’s forget about him.”

Forgetting was no job with Darlene. We took our refills out on the small terrace beyond the bar. The band was playing a soft and thuddy rhumba. She couldn’t resist the tempo and melted my way and let me lead her around under the trees. She danced as though she knew me well, throbbing and rolling to the tune. The South Americans discovered something when they invented the rich and relaxing music for their native bounces. Darlene closed her eyes and gave herself up to the mood, lost in the sensuous scheme of the rhythm and telling me that she liked it with me. We drank and danced until the alcohol increased her pulse beats and she no longer kept her distance. And then we were down the steps and moving where she wanted me to move, into the shadows beyond the terrace. But somebody watched us from the bar. It was Lili.

I said, “Manny isn’t going to like this.”

“Who’ll tell him about it?” she asked.

“A little bird named Lili.”

“To hell with Lili.”

“Manny and she aren’t cozy?”

“Manny eats out of my hand,” she said, as close to me as the lining of my jacket. And twice as hot. “Forget about him. I like the way you move, Steve.”

“Manny’s a good friend of mine,” I said.

“So what? I don’t owe him a thing.”

“What about Chico?”

She laughed, low and husky. She nibbled at my ear playfully, pulling my head her way and letting me feel the pressure of her nails on my neck. “What do I have to do—give you guarantees?”

“You’re drunk, Darlene.”

“I like it this way. I don’t get drunk often.”

She was selling me, but fast. With a doll like this, two weeks at The Montord would last a normal man through a hard winter. But there were reasons why I didn’t want her now. I thought of Manny Erlich and his strange ferocity when loused up in the department of flesh and foolishness. Manny had the introverted anxiety of a college boy who finds the women hard to get. He would hate me forever if I took his latest wren for a walk through the woods. I wondered vaguely whether Lili had put two and two together and found enough to take back to Manny for a session of teasing about his waning flame. Darlene was drunk enough to be delicious now. Lili had disappeared from the door to the bar. We were alone, and the deal tempted me.

So I said, “I’ve got to see a man, Darlene. Forgive me?”

“A man for real?” she asked. “Or just five minutes?’

“For real.”

“I’ll wait right here.”

“Better not,” I said. “It may take time. Business.”

“I’m throwing myself at you, you little dope.”

“I’m not catching. Not tonight.”

“Tomorrow?” she asked, giggling up at the stars. She was lit up like a neon sign, but she didn’t know it. She wobbled a bit as she waved to me. “Tomorrow?”

“It’s a date,” I said, and started down the hill.

It was too easy to get involved at places like The Montord. And I had things to do that pulled away from Darlene’s Spanish charms. Yet I couldn’t resist a last look back at her, because she had what a warm night demanded. In the semi-gloom of the terrace near the bar, she was plumbing her tiny purse for a cigarette. She found one and lit it quickly, jerkily. What had happened to her binge? Her gestures were smooth and orderly as she dragged at the butt and let the smoke cloud around her. She put a hand on a hip and stood there a moment looking my way. But I was completely lost to her, down the hill and away in the darkness. She flipped the cigarette away and started for the bar. A man met her. It was Manny Erlich. He led her away toward the far end of the hotel walk.

I strode down the hill in the direction of Lake Wamshaw, the village at the foot of the mountain. I tried to concentrate on Grace Lasker. But the business of making love blossomed in the cool groves around me. Under the dark trees, in hidden corners, behind rocks and in the tall grasses, couples strolled and sat, their occasional voices whispering above the noise of the crickets in the deep woods. It was the hour for wrestling on the bosom of Mother Nature.

I turned back to The Montord at twelve and began the slow trek up the hill to The Branton and Room 123. And Grace Lasker.

Along the upper reaches of the gravel path, I could see her window. The room was unlit. I crossed before the front of The Branton and stood for a while on the small porch, wondering whether she had forgotten about me. There were all kinds of reasons for her staying away. A broad on the loose in the fresh mountain air can be sidetracked easily by a few weak drinks and a single strong idea. She could be under some tree, or down on the lake, canoodling, or deep in the tall grasses looking up at the moon and liking it from that angle. Yet, the itch to see her again and talk to her moved me into the lobby of The Branton and down the corridor to her door, where I tapped feebly and waited for her to let me in. And when this did not happen, I pushed the door and it swung open freely. I stepped inside.

My eyes sought to pierce the gloom and I waited for the room to come into focus. It was one of the deluxe jobs, complete with all the upper class decor demanded by the big money clients. The moonlight filtered through the curtains on the far wall, bringing the bed back there into hazy view, all grays and blacks, diffused and dim against the darker wall beyond. A soft and sleepy breeze blew gently at the curtains, and when they moved, the moon lit the edges of the gossamer material so that they rose and fell; long and penciled lines of light. They were waving and weaving over the bed and my eyes caught and held them for a long moment. Until I was able to see the bed itself clearly.

Was it Grace on the bed? I moved forward, feeling the deep rich carpet under my feet, advancing like a prowler in a strange bedroom.

“Grace?” I whispered.

She did not answer, so I came closer and reached out for her and found her shoulder. Was she asleep? Now in the greater, brighter light of the moon, I saw that she was wearing nothing but skin for me. There was a nightgown draped over the edge of the bed, as though she had thrown it there at the last moment. Her body lay half turned on its side and my eyes picked up the firm, round contours of her breasts, as youthful and trim as a man’s first love. Her hair fell over the pillow and her head was turned toward the window.

“Grace?” I asked again.

She didn’t answer, because she couldn’t answer, because when I moved over her and stared down at her I saw that her body was frozen and still and unmoving, stiff and unreal in the moonlight, like a sculptured corpse. Panic rose up in me and I stepped away from her, overcome by a sudden twisting sickness inside me. She was a masterpiece of horror, a huge dark stain darkening her delightful breasts. Somebody had stabbed Grace Lasker. The moon had brightened suddenly, so that her face came through to me clearly and her eyes were shut in an attitude of peaceful repose. Had she been asleep when the marauding murderer entered her room? Her lover? And why had she called me here?

All these and several other timely questions buzzed and hummed in my head. But I had little time for considering any one of them.

Because somebody came in behind and hit me with the side of the building.

And I went down and out, deep through the soft carpet and down the hill and into the lake, where I sank into a dark den belonging to a nameless mermaid.

I was out. But cold.