CHAPTER 9

Midge Doughty stood next to me in the washroom. She swabbed at my head with a towel. The bottle had raised a bump behind my ear, but there was little blood. She handed me a bottle of Scotch and I took another long, strong swallow. A group of deliberate and antagonistic midgets were banging a thousand hammers alongside my ear. Otherwise I felt fine.

“Don’t take too much, Steve,” Midge said. “You’ll get potted.”

“On me it would look good right now,” I said. “How long was I out?”

“You’ve got a head of iron. You were blinking awake by the time I ran back here.”

“You see anybody?”

“I was concentrating on you,” Midge laughed. “Whoever hit you ducked back to the other corridor before I could make it to you. Didn’t you see anything?

“Assorted stars.” I took another swallow. The hammers in my head were clanging with a lesser jangle now. But the bastard who hit me had meant business. He was hell-bent for putting me away.

“What about Chester Carpenter?” I asked. “The little man with the three bottles.”

“He passed me and walked north, toward the party.”

“You saw him reach the party?”

Midge wrinkled her cute nose. She could not tell a lie. “Actually, no. He headed back down the aisle. But I didn’t watch him go all the way. Sometime after he left me, I heard the crash of glass back here.”

“So Chester could have doubled back and conked me.”

“He doesn’t look the type.”

“God save me from the professional introverts,” I said.

“What are you going to do now, Steve?”

“You and I are going to keep our mouths shut,” I cautioned her. “I’m writing it all down in my memory book.”

“Somebody doesn’t like you.” Midge shivered. “Aren’t you worried?”

“Scared stiff. But I’m a stinker when I’m scared.” I tried to laugh it up for her, because she was so obviously worried about me. I blamed it on one of the drunken guests. I sold her the idea that maybe one of the reporters had grabbed something on a kleptomaniac journey through Sporting Goods. It could have been a camera, one of the deluxe varieties. Midge accepted my theory. But it left me cold. Somebody had been waiting for me behind the cut of that corridor wall. Somebody had planned to slug me and put me away permanently. Nothing else made sense for me and the summing-up worked at my gut and clammed my hands. I had missed the grim reaper by inches.

I sent Midge back to the party, on her own now, to leave whenever she chose. She would have preferred to stay with me and console me, to discuss the case with me, but my hammering head did not encourage intimacy. I needed another drink. I wanted a closer look at the rollicking guests.

The party was in the final stages of alcoholic abandon. They stumbled around the long table, dawdling over their glasses, singing private songs and foraging among the many bottles for more of their favorite brew. Couples sat in dim corners, pawing each other in the zany, abandoned gestures of semi-drunkenness. The lady reporters and press agents laughed it up for their freshly found mates. One of the babes from a metropolitan tabloid swung herself into the rhythms of a native samba out of the big record player near the Toy House. A bloodless photographer beat on a toy drum as she swirled and shook her tail seductively. A ring of onlookers clapped hands. She bumped and bounced. But my eyes did not hold her in focus long.

There were other sights to attract me. Especially Lila Martin. She was headed out of the shadows now, on the arm of Chester Carpenter. He piloted her toward the elevators manfully. His soapy eyes shone with anticipation. He relished her closeness. He was eating her with his eyes, the little maggot. And Lila stayed with him all the way. The tableau went unnoticed by all but a select few. I caught Larry Pettigrew as he watched Lila on the way out. Pettigrew stood with one of the TV dolls, trying to break loose from her so that he might recover his lost amour. But the TV damsel held him tight.

Near the Toy House, Greg Wilkinson showed signs of distemper, too. His black eyes were riveted on the departing couple. He licked his lower lip angrily, undecided about his next move. He made no motion but to return to his glass of Bourbon.

Only Helen Sutton moved. She crossed the room in a graceful rush, to reach the elevator a few steps before Lila and Chester. But there she hesitated, unable to say a word to her lost boy friend. She turned abruptly as they stepped past her and into the elevator. I thought I saw her struggle to hide her frustration.

“How about a nice fresh drink?” I asked.

“A drink?” She was lost somewhere in a jungle of her own devising. But her clear and girlish eyes registered their thankfulness. “You’re nice, Mister Detective,” she said quietly. “I’ll take your drink. And make it strong.”

She had three of them before the fog cleared for her. She guzzled with an obvious purpose, determined to forget her hopeless passion for Chester Carpenter. It was all very naughty and gay, including her quick and fevered intimacy. I let her throw me her curves.

“Feeling better?” I asked.

“I hate her more every minute.”

“Have another drink. Another short one and you’ll forget all about her.”

“You’re nice.” She smiled sadly. Her eyes were alive with secret determination. She gripped my arm tight. “Hating Lila Martin won’t get me anywhere, will it?”

“It all depends,” I said. “Where do you want to get?”

“Right now I want to forget all about both of them.” She tossed down the rest of her drink with recklessness and a show of gaiety. She had hold of my hand and squeezed hard. “Lila can have him,” she sang out. “He’s all hers, the fool.” She hugged me with her free hand, jerking me her way drunkenly. “You can take me home if you like, Mister Detective.”

“Not tonight, bright eyes.”

“You’re turning me down?” She pouted. “I don’t live far from here. Down in the Village. And I’ll show you my etchings.”

“I don’t like playing second fiddle.”

“But you’re wrong,” she argued, her eyes half closed with dizziness. But she did not release her purposeful grip on my arm. She was pulling me gently toward the elevator. “I’m going to show you how wrong you are, Steve Conacher.”

She had enough appeal to make me change my mind. Her appeal for me lay in her intimacy with Chester Carpenter. For the second time in two days, I was off on a tour of exploration by way of a crocked doll. She was another one-way ticket to the inner workings of the Cumber Advertising Staff.

Downstairs, the employees’ exit lit the pavement with a small square of light. The rest of the street was bathed in black, the dank emptiness of a sleeping canyon. It began to drizzle while we stood there waiting for a cab. The cold rain made Helen snuggle closer to me, her head against my shoulder, her body trembling gently. An occasional truck rumbled to the east. I took her hand and began to walk toward Fifth Avenue for a cruising cab.

It was when we approached the corner that I saw the man. He walked slowly out of the doorway up ahead. He had been standing in that doorway with his eyes on the entrance to Cumber’s. Now he moved away. As he took his first few steps, his size and shape and the queer way he walked rang a dim and distant bell in my mind. Some men can be spotted by personal tabs: a type of hat, a mustache, eyeglasses, an expression or an exaggerated feature. This character was normal, a flabby, middle-aged gent in a simple raincoat. He wore a usual gray felt of the Homburg variety. He walked, however, with a peculiar crablike movement, his hands deep in his coat pockets, his broad shoulders hunched down so that his neck projected out of his garments like a strange, erratic sort of turtle. The sight of him scooting off ahead of me set off a chain reaction in my mind. The stimulation of my mental crankcase took only a few seconds. A detective must have a brain like a soft and all-encompassing sponge. Out of the many times I saw special guests in various police files and line-ups, out of my casual studies of the Safe and Loft indices, this man rose into sudden prominence. Something about him teased my memory. He was turning up Fifth Avenue when I tugged Helen to the side of the pavement.

“Wait here,” I said. “I’ve got to see a man.”

He skipped across Fifth Avenue and headed uptown, alerted now, aware that he was being followed. He kept snaking his head back to catch a passing cab. He whistled sharply when one appeared. It was time for me to cross the street. I began to sprint.

But somebody tripped me.

My body was poised and ready to close the gap between me and the cab in record time. I went down in a bundle of lacerated energy. My fall was classic. It was a perfect pratt skid, flat on my stomach and clawing for an impossible support somewhere in the empty air. In the split second of my upset, I saw the outline of the figure behind me. The stinker who had stopped me was grinning down at me. His foot was out, ready to propel him in flight. I grabbed hard at that foot.

He came down on me and all over me. We rolled into the curb and I heard him mutter a quiet curse. When I jerked him to his feet, however, he was all apologies.

“Sorry, old man,” he said. “Didn’t see you.”

“You lie like hell.” He was a thin and studious-looking crud, equipped with an anemic face and a pair of heavy tortoise-shell glasses to accent his waxen pan. He let himself be tugged close to me, not bothering to fight my grasping fists. He was a head taller than I, but a loose and limp flyweight. He was as sad and regretful as a college boy in a sorority backhouse. Something about him irritated me. “Do I know you?” I asked.

“Never had the pleasure, old boy.”

“Say that again.”

“I’ve never met you,” he said curiously. He had a high voice, a halftone below the pitch of a nance. Now that I could see his pasty face up close, I was aware of another mental jolt. This lad, too, was familiar to me. “Just an accident,” he said quietly. “I was about to make a dash for that cab, too.”

“I know you now,” I said.

“You do? I don’t recollect meeting you.”

“Squeeze yourself. I’ve seen you down in Haggerty’s office.”

“Haggerty?”

“Captain Paul Haggerty,” I said. “Safe and Loft. Police.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, really.”

“I’ll refresh your memory. You were brought in a few years ago, on suspicion. Haggerty thought maybe you had something to do with the heist down at the Farundel Fur Company.” He only stared at me through his heavy lenses. His eyes, behind the glass, had all the intensity of a cow in pasture. He rarely blinked. You caught all the expression on his bony face by way of his sly and brittle smile. I yanked at his lapels, harder. I brought him closer to me before I gave him the punch line. “You’re Fred Pate, better known as the Englishman.”

“You’re out of your mind, old man,” he said.

“And the man in the cab was your boss, Arthur Malman.”

“Never heard the name before.”

“Bull feathers,” I said. “You’ve been working with Malman for years. That was why Haggerty pulled you in the last time. Arthur Malman engineered some of the most famous robberies in this town. He was the original messenger boy goniff. Arthur’s been on ice for a couple of years now. Where’s Malman been?”

“I insist I don’t know the gentleman.”

“Baltimore?” I asked. “Last I heard, Malman bought himself a greasy spoon in Baltimore.”

“I’m unfamiliar with Malman, as I said.”

“So he’s back in town. Something cooking? Something at Cumber’s maybe?”

“Utter nonsense,” said the Englishman calmly. “Kindly let go of my arm. I have places to go.”

“Let’s keep chinning, chum.”

“You are now,” he said with resolve, “beginning to irritate me, friend.”

“Wasn’t Malman in the cab?”

He laughed, a thin squeak of merriment. You would expect him to be at home with crumpets and scones and a pot of tea, he was that good with the British routine. He squirmed uncomfortably in my fists.

“Absurd,” he said. “Perfectly silly.”

“You want me to coax you, Pate?”

He didn’t approve of my last sentiment. Suddenly he had wriggled out of my hands and was falling away from me and then catching himself neatly before he hit the pavement; scrambling to his feet and legging it uptown, his topcoat swirling in the draft behind him. He ran with the desperate speed of a seasoned escape artist, making the next corner in no time at all. He disappeared there, turning to the left and losing himself in the black and quiet reaches of the side street.

I thought I heard his high laughter as I started back to Helen Sutton.