CHAPTER 20

12:16 A.M. Tuesday

“As a brawl is, a brawl is,” said the skinny broad near the door. “A brawl is a brawl.”

“A Stein is a Stein,” remarked the loose-boned creampuff at her side.

“And what’s wrong with Stein?”

“I dig her not.”

“You’re a snob, Terence.”

“An honest snob.”

“And how about James the Joyce?”

“Nux vomica for me, darling.”

“You’re uncouth, Terence. Get me another drink.”

“My pleasure. Scotch?”

“Don’t be plebeian. I’m drinking Aquavit.”

“Lord, but you are fancy, Nancy.”

“Fade. I’m thirsty.”

“I’m gone.”

Gloria and I were swept into the core of the milling mob in Joan Barrett’s penthouse. In the big square hallway, a few of the lazy guests were already sprawled out on the hard floor, their backs against the wall, their butts on nothing but the fat of their flesh. We edged among them, taking care to-avoid stepping on anybody’s groin while threading our way into the giant living room. Once past the stragglers in the hall, a blast of cacophony hit my ears with the impact of an air-raid siren blown at close range. The party thumped and blared, most of the guests already tanked, standing in odd knots and groups, bellowing and braying a mixture of nonsense and dee-dug beatnik thought.

“I’ll need a double Scotch for this party,” Gloria said. “Or maybe a double double, Johnny.”

“Grab hold of something and stay put,” I advised her. “I’ll crawl through the mob and find the bar. Don’t go away.”

“Where could I go?” she asked.

A thousand miles across the room, a four-piece combine chopped away at a lively tune, something strictly progressive, the melody buried under layers of vagrant improvisation. The drummer dusted the cymbals skillfully, creasing his brow over the skins as he fought to hold the intricate beat behind the twittering runs of Sam Godoff, probably the best clarinet east of the Mississippi. They took the bite off the tune and let it die a little. There was a girl singer standing near the piano, her mouth already open in song. She sold the words well, a husky-throated wren with a familiar pitch. When she began to move her hips in a slow grind, she came into focus for me.

She was Sandra Tyson.

“Surprised?”

Joan Barrett grabbed my arm and smiled at me, her pixy face bright with obvious connivance. A tall and eager-eyed juvenile stood beside her, a blond type, as handsome as a virgin’s dream and twice as dainty. She waved him off with a quick flip of her hand. He faded into the surrounding group.

“Flabbergasted,” I said. “How did Sandra get here?”

“I invited her.”

“Just like that?”

“Why not? I met her in Mineola when I did the quiz bit with your friend Larry Mace. She’s a nice gal.”

“The greatest.”

“You don’t have to like her that much,” Joan pouted, tugging me back and to the left in the direction of the bar. She plied me with a drink, holding me close and introducing me to a sampling of the mad guests. The party was a potpourri of personalities, all of them working hard to promote their individual lunacies, writers and poets and artists out of the upper level of New York society. I recognized several popular actors from the offbeat Greenwich Village operas, keen students of fresh methods that made the uptown drama pioneers look like Victorian stagehands. She introduced me to a few choice samples at the bar, clinging to me with a soft tenacity, unwilling to release me yet.

“I promised a lady a drink,” I said.

“Which lady?”

“The one I brought.”

“Namely?”

“Gloria Cobb.”

“Oh, no.” She made a face full of sour apples and vinegar. Then a sudden impish grin replaced the petulance. She laughed heartily. “A funny thought just crossed my mind, Johnny.”

“Feed it to me.”

“You know what I was thinking? It just hit me that my party is a nest for all the suspects in Mark Tyson’s murder. Sort of an alcoholic reviewing stand, you might say. Leo Austrian is here, probably dozing under a sofa. And of course, my dear father will put in an appearance. To say nothing of George Keck.”

“You know George?”

“But of course. George is fun. When he gets crocked he does a shadow-boxing routine that’s simply fantastic.”

“I can’t wait.”

“You don’t look happy, Johnny darling.”

“The party isn’t complete,” I said. “You forgot Larry Mace.”

“You’re angry, aren’t you?”

“I don’t like corny theatricals.”

“Not even for laughs?”

“Murder isn’t funny, Joan. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get my date a drink.”

“Wait.” She moved in closer, fingering my tie and looking deep into my personal thought box. She was cute enough to grab and squeeze in this pose. She worked on my primitive urges, fought to make me forget the crush and hubbub around us. For a flickering pause, she dragged me into her inner world, a madcap place where we could play the intimate games. She radared the message by way of her gamin smile and the warm touch of her hand on mine. She was waiting for my answer, the wordless sign that I would forgive her this lunatic gathering, that we could meet later and enjoy each other. It was an effort to hold my face in line, to give her the polite brush.

“I want to talk to you later, Johnny,” she said softly.

“Later tonight, or tomorrow?”

“Tonight.”

“I’ll be around.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

She slid away from me then, losing herself in the crowd. I saw her turn on her party laugh, greeting and gushing, giggling and gurgling as she slipped away and was gone. For a few minutes I stood at the bar, teased by her weird personality, wondering why she had converted this brouhaha into a parade ground for the Tyson case suspects. What enjoyment could the scheme bring to her?

My mind plucked remembered facets of her zany temperament out of the storehouse of her publicized escapades. She was the gilded gal of madcap headlines. She operated from impulse, the sort of character who created publicity out of some hidden yen for recognition. And her adventures never failed to hit Page One. Only a few months ago she had arrived on the heated streets of Las Vegas in a New York City taxi, to roll up at the entrance to the biggest hotel in town and startle the management and the populace with her casual behavior.

Why the cab? Her answer was simple and direct. She had itched for Las Vegas after a dull party on Park Avenue. Her burning desire for the trip developed on the corner of Fifty-Seventh Street and Madison Avenue, at two-thirty in the ayem. She found a willing cabby and they were off on the dizzy jaunt across the country.

“Forget about me?”

Gloria Cobb was standing at the end of the hors d’oeuvres table, plucking caviar canapés and feeding them to a stocky gent with a prosperous pan. She introduced him as Chester Monk, but I knew him before she opened her pretty mouth. Monk was the head of a big public-relations outfit, a big wheel in show biz and television promotions.

“Greetings,” he oozed. “Nice brawl, what?”

“Loud,” I said. “Here’s your drink, Gloria.”

“Gloria tells me you’re a detective,” said Monk. “Reminds me of the time I worked for J. B. Worth, the big missing-persons expert. Know him, Amsterdam?”

“Great man. Listen, Gloria, I’ve got to see Sandra. Forgive me if I buck the crowd for a while?”

“My pleasure,” said Monk, beaming at her through his bifocals and laying a proprietary hand on her. “See you later, Amsterdam.”

I left them together, with Gloria probably working to parlay herself into a job in his office. And from the way Monk was nibbling at her with his hot eyes, she had it made. The last double Scotch had unlimbered my brain. Alcohol does idiot things to my skull. My reactions erupt in expected ways; a few drinks only sharpen me, loosening my mental machinery so that my thoughts click smoothly. In this phase, the surrounding world was my personal oyster. People and things slipped into easy focus. Voices bit deep into my ears. Faces loomed important and interesting, as though caught in a stroboscopic camera, each gesture important, each grimace a key to objective reckoning. Around and about me the crowd drifted and hummed. I circled the knots and bunches yammering humanity, working to see them with objective.

“You take this crud Tennessee Williams.”

“Take him? Who needs him?”

“I mean, what the hell. All the time with the same gimmicks. The stallion lover. The middle-aged sex-pot. The virgin with the—”

“And don’t forget the stupid old man.”

“And the sick whore.”

“Talking about whores, did you see the doll who just strolled in? I mean—”

In the far corner, the arty boys and gals were gathered in a tight clump before a small gallery of paintings; a curlicued Mark Tobey abstraction, a small but spidery Jackson Pollock, and a monochromatic Buffet, one of his recent items depicting a gray nude against a gray wall on a gray day.

“He’s way out, this Buffet cat.”

“Maxfield Parrish never had it so good.”

“I hear he owns a few châteaux with hot-and-cold running lackeys.”

“I don’t dig him.”

“You always were a Norman Rockwell buff, idiot.”

“I like a picture I can read.”

“Reading is for books, you square.”

“Like etchings, Gwen. You dig etchings, baby?”

“Are you making a pass at me?”

“My place is only three blocks from here.”

“I don’t go for the etching boys. Get lost, fruit.”

“Good God! What happened to the old-fashioned chicks?”

A character in a white coat drifted over and disrupted the artistic double-talk, working himself in close with a tray of assorted snacks. The boys and girls abandoned their chit-chat for hungry lunges at the upper-class pizza, emptying his tray in one fell swoop. They gnawed at the hors d’oeuvres and downed their drinks, as avid as the Greenwich Village beatniks and twice as impolite. The thumping of the music was lost beneath the great buzz of talk and laughter. Where was Sandra? I edged through the wall of humanity bordering the terrace. Out there only a few fresh-air fanatics idled under the hot sky.

A well alcoholed broad in a state of gleeful abandon waltzed to my side and gripped my arm, brandishing a canapé before my mouth and making odd noises of delight.

“Eat it, handsome. You look unhealthy.”

“I’ll live,” I said.

“Undernourished is what you are. Let mamma get you a glass of milk?”

“Mamma is off her rocker.”

“Oooh, a nasty boy. Come sit with me. Mamma will teach you about the birds and the bees.”

“Later, mamma. Have you seen the girl singer?”

“So? You’re the show biz type?”

“You dig me, mamma.”

“Sandra Tyson? You want Sandra?”

“Can’t live without her.”

“Around on the other side,” she said with a wave of her hand. “I’ve never been so insulted in all my—”

The terrace was a broad, square rim around the penthouse, an area skillfully planted with short and incongruous little trees and shrubs. Round the route, a few stray couples made love on the cute benches deep in the shadows. A fresh breeze from the north hit me when I arrived at the opposite end of the terrace. Here only a small and feeble light came through from the inside, a patch of luminosity that made me squint to focus into the gloom.

Then a sudden noise jolted me.

“No!” somebody was saying.

The single word carried undertones of horror. I couldn’t see the source. There was an abutment at the far side of the terrace, a section where the architect had gone whimsical and fey. A small fountain gurgled in the semidarkness.

But another gurgling froze me. Somebody was being choked.

And from where I stood, the victim was Hiram Barrett.