CHAPTER 6

First things first.

My mind had charted a rough map of the voyage I would take from here on in. How can you describe the mechanics of detection? Around and about the private investigator lie the wastelands of the chase. You are a lone prospector in a desert, wandering the range with a hope and a prayer, searching willy-nilly for the clues to the lode. You are an earnest sportsman, a fisherman on a lake, casting your line in the deep pools and the shallows, plumbing the water for a clue to the elusive trout. You are alone, always alone with the closetful of doubts and schemes, a thousand, thousand fleeting ideas, theories and plans, thoughts and counter-thoughts. You pluck and sort and cancel out the dross. And after a while, the miasma of fogged calculations clears away and the web is broken and the path leads to the source.

Or you wind up flat on your face.

I canceled out the business of alibis on this one. Jorgenson and his cooperative coroner had iced the death of Grace Lasker. It was wrapped in a neat parcel, ready for the local archives. Grace Lasker had committed suicide. It was as simple as that. But there were strong leads into her past. There were signposts to her restlessness and her fears. There was Archy Funk.

Archy’s room faced the small square garden opposite the swimming pool, on the third floor of the outbuilding known as The Tyler House. I barged in without knocking and found him on his back, in bed. He sat up and gave me the open scowl of an enraged wrestler about to lay his opponent low.

Then he laid me low. He got up fast and swung for my jaw, and before I could backtrack, his great fist hit me. It was an easy crack, a graceful blow that connected as though he had done it many times before. I fell back and crashed against a small table and off the table against the wall. When my eyes swam back into reality, there were three of him standing over me, a dizzying sight because they were all laughing at me.

Archy helped me to my feet.

“That,” he said, “was on account. On account of what you did to me last night.”

“Everybody in this dump is a comedian,” I said. My jaw radiated a fresh and sudden heat.

“Put your tail down, peeper,” Archy said, still friendly as an animal. He jerked his robe string in a reflex of nervousness and annoyance. His hands were bandaged on the knuckles where he had gone down last night, against the rocks, after I had tripped him down the hill. There was a great patch of adhesive tape over his right eye and long scratches near his square jaw. “Jesus, you’re smaller than I figured you last night.”

“How did you know I was a private investigator?” I asked.

“I smelled you,” he said. “I got a good nose for the dicks. Now, do you walk out of here nice? Or do I grab you by your drawers and coax you?”

“Relax, Archy. I’m on your side.”

“Break it into pieces, peeper.”

“I can do you a big favor.”

“Am I asking for favors?” He bounced to his feet and went to the window, as jittery as an amateur waiting for the bell. He had muscled legs, strangely trim for a man of his girth. He rammed a cigarette into his fat mouth and sat down on the bed again, hard enough to make the springs wail. Up close, there was a subtle softness about him. His eyes? He had the wide-open stare of a small boy asking for candy. But something sad and wistful burned there now.

“You may be needing a friend, Archy.”

“Nuts. I’m fussy about my friends. Why don’t you go peddle your latkes somewhere else, chum?”

“No customers,” I said. “For you, I’ve got something special.”

“I’m not buying any.”

“I’m a good salesman,” I said, and sat down in the chair near the window. “I’m so good, I know you’ll buy, Archy. Because you and I have got to make small talk about Grace Lasker.”

The mention of her name tightened him up in knots. It was very strange and very curious, the quick and blinking surge of fear and trembling that swept over him and rendered him limp and weak. It was almost laughable, the way he twitched and trembled, the way his eyes wandered here and there, around the room and through the window and back again to stare down at the pattern in the rug. Was he about to weep? Suddenly I knew the reason for the odd quality of dampness and disquiet in his eyes. The poor slob had been crying before I walked in.

I said, “You heard about Grace?”

“Of course I heard,” he said quietly. “God, it don’t seem possible.”

“You don’t believe she killed herself?”

“Who wants to know?”

“I’ll keep it a secret, Archy. It’s my business to keep secrets. My name is Steve Conacher and I’m a private detective, and I’m working for old man Lasker.”

“Old man Lasker?” he asked himself. The sting was out of his tongue. Something had happened to him since the last quick moment of our meeting last night. “You told Lasker about seeing me come out of her room?”

“Not yet, I didn’t.”

“What held you up?”

“You,” I said. “I wanted to chew it over with you first. There’s a hick cop downstairs who figures Grace killed herself. The deal is all wrapped up, Archy. Case closed, as they say in the law courts. But I could open it up again if I wanted to. I could open it wide. All I have to do is walk down and slap the dumb hick on the head and tell him I saw you come out of her room last night.”

“I’ll be damned,” said Archy weakly. “I guess you’re right, Conacher.”

“But I don’t want to do that, Archy. You know why? Because this crumb cop Jorgenson gives me a pain where I sit down. It’ll give me kicks to wrap this thing up and then throw it at him. But hard. Because I liked Grace Lasker. And I want to grab the character who butchered her. With a knife.”

Something snapped in Archy’s face and he got up and began to roam the room. He pounded his big fists briskly, making a fiat, smacking noise. He jerked his way to the window, but found nothing out there to soothe him. I saw his big head go down and heard the thick and troubled sound of his sobbing. It was enough to make me look away. The sight of a man breaking down is no tonic for me. And Archy was completely flattened by my revelation. I began to talk, slowly and quietly, telling him how I had found her, hoping to break through his outburst of hysterics, to force him into the quick and revealing patter that sometimes follows sudden sorrow. He only stood there, frozen at the window, banging his futile fist against the wall and saying nothing until I was all finished.

“The dirty louse, the dirty louse,” he said huskily. “I should have watched her after I left the lake. Jesus, it could be my fault, peeper. It could be my fault, all the way.”

“Where did you go when you came out of it?” I asked.

“To the bar,” he said, his brow furrowed. “Then I came up here to my room and bandaged myself up and hit the hay.”

“What time was that?”

“Maybe eleven-thirty. Maybe closer to twelve.”

“And you stayed here?”

“What else?”

“Somebody drove Grace out of the lot, in her convertible.”

“You don’t think I did it?”

“Why not?” I asked. He reacted to my doubts with something resembling the petulance of a small boy going to bed without supper. He shook his head at me hopelessly, sadly. He coughed and growled, not angrily, but in a jittery, woebegone way.

Then he began to stroll again, around and around the room, as restless as an expectant father. Was he mumbling feeble threats? Or making up his mind to throttle me where I sat? It took time for him to work out the fury he was in, to let his massive frame sag into a chair. The sorrow was gone from his saucer eyes now. His simmering restlessness began to die. And after a little while he was ready to talk again.

Slowly and thoughtfully now, he said, “You look like a good guy, Conacher. I’ll level with you. It don’t make sense for you to think I had anything to do with killing Grace. Not me. Not an old friend like me. You got to believe me when I tell you I want to grab that killer as much as you. Maybe more. Maybe there’s a chance I’ll get to him first, and if that happens the bastard will get his neck broken. Because I feel just the same as you do about Grace. You know how long Grace and I have been friends? Get a picture of this, Conacher. It goes back a long ways—back to the days when she was going up in burlesque, when she used to be the best doll in the business at belly rolls and grinds.”

“You were on the stage?” I asked.

“A comic,” Archy said quietly. “I was a pratt-fall comic. Not the top banana, Conacher. But I could make them laugh with my falls. You know what they used to call me? You remember a comic named Falling Funk, maybe? That’s me.”

“Of course I do,” I lied. It was warming him to be remembered, and I wanted him loose and warm and cooperative. “You’re modest, Archy. You were the best in the trade.”

“Well, some people thought I did better than Sliding Billy Watson.” He rolled his eyes sadly and shook his big head. “Especially Grace.”

“Tell me about her.”

“You mean back then? Ah, she was terrific, Conacher. She was the hottest dame on the boards. They used to break their hands clapping for her. And nice? Good? Grace was a dream, not like the other bump dames on the wheel. The others were after the buck, knocking around with any guy who came along with a fast pitch and a promise. Most of the dolls would roll over and play for a free dinner. But not Grace. She didn’t horse around. She had a steady guy—and she would have married him if he didn’t get knocked off in an auto accident. It damn near broke my heart when she had to quit the wheel because of the baby.”

“What happened to the baby?”

“Adopted. She had to let the kid go. How in hell can you drag a baby around in burlesque? It broke her heart, but it had to be done. Couple by the name of Armette adopted it.”

“Armette?” The name was setting off a shower of mental sparks, backing me through the recent past. “Funny name.”

“Unusual.”

“I’ve heard it recently.” The name was a challenge. Where had I heard it last? I put myself on a one-way route into the events leading to The Montord, skimming quickly to my desk in New York and beginning the trek from there. Armette? The name rang no bell against the background of my mouse nest on Forty-fifth Street. My list of clients contained nothing resembling a French type of name, nor did any of my friends and acquaintances own such a title. You skim the cream off memory’s glass and after that you’re down below in the subtle depths of incident and coincident. Armette? I might have read the name on a box of cheese, or a store front, or a bottle of liquor. A movie star? A celebrity? The name of my tailor? I shook them all off and dipped deeper into my storehouse of recollection. I began all over again the trip to H. M. Lasker’s office and relived the interview with him and accepted the assignment to tail his wife. And then I was in my car, riding behind her to Philadelphia and beyond Philadelphia into the hills of the Catskills.

And then I had it, suddenly! The farmhouse where she stopped to spend the night. I stood once again alongside my car, looking down the road at the little colonial dwelling, my eyes alert and alive to the landscape. There was a mailbox at the gate.

And the name on the tin box was Armette, of course!

I said, “There’s an Armette over in Taylorville.”

“Is that so?” said Archy.

“You didn’t know about it?”

“I know from nothing.”

“Grace didn’t mention it?”

“Why should she?”

“Let me ask the questions, Archy,” I said. “Just what did you and Grace talk about last night?”

“Old times. Mostly old times.”

“How did she seem to you?”

“Terrific. Grace always hit me as a hell of a woman.”

“I mean the way she sounded. Worried? Upset? Sad?”

“Sad, maybe—a little.”

“And why was she up here?”

“Who’d ask her a question like that?” Archy said, with a shrug. “Do I mind her business?”

“You took a crack at it. She asked you to take me for a ride?”

“That she did. She wanted you out of the way, but she didn’t give me any reasons. A couple of hours, she said.”

“It doesn’t make sense.”

“I agree,” Archy said. “But it’s the truth. Don’t forget, I want to help you clean this thing up, Conacher. You got to believe me, all the way. I’m leveling.”

“Then start straining,” I told him. “Let your hair down and tell me what you came up here for.”

“Up here?” Archy examined me with the incredulous look of an elephant viewing a mouse. “For a week-end, naturally. But I’ve been here before. You can check me down at the desk. Ask Lili about me. Jesus, I’m an old customer up here. It just so happens I bump into Grace Borden last night, after maybe nineteen years. So I give her a big hello and she asks me to come to see her in her room. She says she needs my help. And I go to see her. You know the rest. It’s as corny as that, Conacher. You think I’m maybe lying to you?”

“I’ll buy it, all the way,” I lied. There was nothing to be gained by fighting him. Not now. If he was putting on an act, he was a greater thespian than John Barrymore. He fairly oozed sincerity and honesty.

“I’m glad,” Archy said, and grabbed my hand and pumped it. He had a grip as tender as a steel clamp. “I figure I can help you a lot, peeper.”

“You’ll be around?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Good idea,” I said. “Because if you try to leave, I’ll have a big slob named Jorgenson after you on his horse.”

“Aw, cut it, Conacher. I’m with you.”

I paused to look back at him from the doorway. He gave me his limpid eyes now, loading them with the deep and trusting focus of a faithful dog eyeing his master. He waited for me to grin at him before he waved his hand. I returned the friendly gesture.

And I said, “I’m with you, too, Archy. Don’t forget that.”