Читать книгу Kiss Your Elbow - Alan Handley - Страница 10

I WALKED UP EIGHTH AVENUE for a couple of blocks trying to decide what to do. The Forty-second Street fleabags didn’t seem to solve anything, though in all the books, ticket stubs seem to be wonderful alibis—except that the people that use them for alibis always seem to end up in the last chapter behind the eight ball. Which is where it looked like I was going to end up without costing me forty cents, either. Of course, I shouldn’t have taken the Youth and Beauty Book.

And then I thought of Maggie Lanson. Even if her name hadn’t been in the book for an eleven o’clock appointment, sooner or later I would have thought of Maggie Lanson. She is the only other person I know of in the world that feels the same way I do about most things. We are, as she is wont to say after a couple of slugs of pernod, sympatique.

She’s exactly my age, thirty-two, and was terribly pretty about ten years ago but the pernod hasn’t helped that part of it much. She’s quite rich, mostly from an early husband she divorced about seven years ago, and she tries to be an actress when she thinks of it. That was how I first met her. We were in the same show, my one hit, for six months right after her divorce. I guess she felt she had to have something to do nights.

I don’t know if I thought she would be able to tell me who had done Nellie in. Maybe she was early for her appointment or maybe she didn’t keep it at all—which wouldn’t be unusual. And if she did maybe she knew this Bobby LeB. She knew the most alarming collection of people. Anyway, Maggie was the only person in the world I wanted to see.

Her apartment, at the corner of Fifth Avenue and one of the Sixties, is on the fifth floor, and there is a buzzer system and a work-it-yourself elevator. I had a key because she didn’t mind my dropping in if I was in the neighborhood—whether she was there or not—provided I called up first and emptied the ash trays when I left. I dialed her number in the corner drugstore (only in that section of town they are called “chemists” or “apothecaries”) before walking over, but there wasn’t any answer so I went up to her apartment and let myself in.

It’s a nice apartment if you don’t mind stripes. Mostly gray and yellow stripes and lots of flowers. But the chairs are comfortable and the Capehart works and there’s generally plenty to drink. A big living room with a practical fireplace, a foyer, bedroom and bath and a minute kitchenette in which ice cubes are the only thing she knows the recipe for. I poured myself a mahogany Scotch because by this time it was two minutes after twelve, which made it legal as far as I’m concerned. Then I sat down and started thinking about how soon what had happened was going to hit me and what a jerk I was not to leave that damn book in Nellie’s office and call the cops. I took out the Youth and Beauty Book. The blood had dried on its edges, and on the page that had been open were a few squiggles in an unpleasant shade of brown that had been painted with Nellie’s own blood—her hair having been the paintbrush—when I pulled it out from under her.

It was a sort of hammering with a couple of low moans thrown in, all kind of muffled. It would go on for a minute, then stop for a few, then start again. At first I thought it was only that I should have watered my drink, but when it came the third time I knew it wasn’t the Scotch and it wasn’t me—it was in Maggie’s bathroom. So I got brave by finishing off the Scotch and, making with a bookend, walked over to the bathroom door.

As I was in this far, I might as well shoot the works. I grabbed the bookend even tighter and started to open the bathroom door, only there wasn’t any doorknob. It was lying on the floor right by the door. I picked it up and fit the square rod in the hole as quietly as I could, which wasn’t very, since I was holding the bookend at the same time. Softly I turned it and threw open the door.

There was Maggie, nothing on but a nightgown, lying on the bathroom floor with her chin in one hand and languidly pounding on the pipes under the wash basin with a big empty mouthwash bottle in the other. She looked up from her pounding and after reeling in her eyes, she recognized me.

“Angel,” she said, “for God’s sake bring me a drink.” She tossed the bottle in a corner where it shattered around a couple of times then lay still. I walked over to help her. My shoes crunched broken glass on the tile floor. “What happened to you?” I helped her to sit up. She yelped and, rolling over on one hip, looked at her behind. Blood was staining her sheer nightgown.

“Now isn’t that maddening? A brand-new one, too. Well, don’t just stand there, darling. Get me out of here.” I picked her up, carried her into the bedroom and deposited her gently, stomach down, on the bed. The cut wasn’t very deep, but was bleeding quite a lot. I gave her a face towel to hold on it while I ransacked the medicine cabinet.

“It was that damned doorknob coming off. I’ve been trapped in there for hours. I broke a couple of bottles pounding on the pipes, but no one would come. If you’re expecting to find bandages in that thing you’re wasting your time…. There’s nothing but sleeping pills.” She was right. “Call the superintendent. He’s very sweet. I don’t think it’s worth quite all this fuss, though I’m glad you came in when you did. I was running out of bottles. What about that drink?” I came back to the bed.

“Maggie, how drunk are you?”

“I’m not drunk, Timmy. Honestly I’m not. Well, maybe a little hungover, but I was in there for over two hours, and I do think I should be allowed to be just a little testy, if I want.”

“Can you grapple with a horrid fact?”

“Couldn’t it wait till I got bandaged up and had a real drink? It’ll keep that long, won’t it?”

“Yes. I think it’ll keep that long.” I phoned the superintendent on the little house phone, and he promptly brought bandages, Mercurochrome and a screwdriver.

He was most apologetic and fixed the doorknob in a few minutes. He could have done it even quicker if he had kept his eyes on his work instead of Maggie, who was still on the bed covered with a blanket trying to negotiate, while lying on her stomach, the drink I had mixed for her. I finally got him out and left Maggie to fix the bandage by herself and started pacing back and forth in the living room.

The cut wasn’t at all serious, but I was still a little queasy from it. Bleeding women, two in the same hour, were rapidly getting me down.

Maggie finally came out of the bedroom dressed in a blue housecoat with more stripes and brushing her hair.

“I know I’m stuck with that adhesive tape for the rest of my life. I used practically the whole roll.”

“At least you’ve got a cast-iron alibi.”

“Whatever should I want an alibi for?”

“Did you have any appointments this morning?”

The brush stopped in midair. “Oh my God, Nellie! I forgot all about it. She called yesterday and told me to come in this morning for a job. I’d better phone her.”

“You needn’t bother. She’s been murdered.”

“What a pity. Oh, well, I don’t suppose I’d have gotten the job anyway.”

“Maggie, I said that Nellie’s been murdered.”

“I heard you, dear. And about time, too, if you ask me.”

“What makes you say that?”

“But, angel…she’s an agent.”

“Maybe so, but sooner or later the police are going to want to know who killed her.”

“What are you getting in such a tizzy about? It isn’t anybody we know, is it?”

“Maybe it is.”

“Oh, good. Who? Tell me.”

“I thought perhaps you’d know something about it. That’s why I came here this morning.”

“Believe me, Timmy, I’ve got something better to do than go around murdering Nellie Brant. I think I will now have another drink. No, you stay here, I’ll get them this time. Since I can’t sit down, I might as well be busy.” She went into the foyer to the bar and brought us back a couple of straight Scotches. “Would you like to play Gin Rummy? We could do it on the mantelpiece.”

“No, I would not like to play Gin Rummy. Please, Maggie, I’m serious.”

“I’m sorry, Timmy. I do mean to listen but that affair with the bathroom has made me rather jumpy. I wish I could sit down.” She pulled some pillows from the couch and lined them up on the floor and lay on her stomach. “There, that’s much better. Now tell me everything in one word.”

“Well, Nellie called me up this morning and…”

“What time was that?”

“About ten o’clock, I think.”

“And she was dead when you saw her, whenever it was? As a matter of fact, I don’t imagine she was dead at all. Probably drunk. She’s a notorious nipper.”

“She was dead, all right. I took her pulse. She was still warm, but definitely dead.”

“Oh, but that doesn’t mean a thing. I’m forever reading about people with no pulse at all carrying on like mad. I read about a chicken with his head chopped completely off, mind you, living to a ripe old age.”

I didn’t like it one bit that my big moment did not turn out to be a big moment after all. And besides, I knew Nellie was dead. The picture of that body kept coming into focus in spite of the Scotch. I kept fighting it, trying to make it vague and blurry again, but it didn’t work. I lay down on the floor beside Maggie and stared up at the ceiling.

“Here, lift up your head a minute.” I lifted up my head and she pushed a pillow under it. “Now lie back.” She stroked my forehead. Her hand was cool. It felt good. “Now then, tell me all. She called you at ten and then what happened?”

I told her exactly what had happened, or at least as near as I could remember. She thought it over for a moment.

“What about fingerprints? They’re very smart this season.”

“I had my gloves on,” I said. I was rather pleased with myself not to be caught with that one.

“Pretty damned clever, aren’t you, to…”

“Actually, I didn’t really plan it that way,” I said. “It just happened.”

“…to be able to take a pulse with your gloves on.” She finished on what I thought was an unnecessarily triumphant note.

And, of course, I must have taken my gloves off to feel for Nellie’s pulse. I admitted that rather sheepishly.

“And did you put your gloves back on right after you picked up the Youth and Beauty Book?” I couldn’t remember. “And did you close the door after you left?” Yes, I was positive of that. “Well, then, you have probably left a print large as life and twice as natural on the office door.” I tried desperately to remember if I had put my gloves back on or not.

“But what if I did,” I said defensively. “They won’t necessarily know whose they are. I’m not in the rogues’ gallery—yet.”

Maggie regarded me with what I can only describe as a pitying expression.

“Well, what’s wrong now?”

“But you were in the army, weren’t you? You can remember that much, can’t you?” After four years of that production you’re not liable to forget it in a hurry, and I told her so. “Remember that little card you had to carry about with you that had that repulsive picture of you on it…I could never understand why you didn’t go to a really good photographer….”

“So what? I didn’t leave my, what you describe as ‘repulsive,’ portrait on the doorknob, did I?”

“You might just as well have. In case you don’t recall, your fingerprints were on that card, too, with a copy probably crouching somewhere in a Washington filing cabinet, with your repulsive portrait on the same page, waiting for just this moment.”

I got up and walked over to the window and looked down on Fifth Avenue. It was all crawling and busy and it wasn’t raining and it wasn’t snowing and it looked fine. Central Park was pleasant, too, even for February. It looked like I would like to keep on seeing it for quite a while yet, but the odds at the moment were less than even.

“Well, I suppose I ought to save the taxpayers some money and give myself up before they go to all that trouble and expense of spreading a dragnet to apprehend the fiend. A flock of New York’s Finest are no doubt right this minute combing the Casbah from top to bottom.”

Maggie gingerly got to her feet somewhat like a camel, one end at a time. After several exploratory pokes, she evidently decided she could navigate under her own power and came over beside me at the window. The sunlight made her hair shine. I was going to miss that, too. She took my arm and very gently led me to the couch and pushed me down on it. She stood in front of me with arms folded and just looked at me. I resented being treated like an idiot.

“Now you listen to me for a minute,” she began. “You’ve been having one hell of a fine time working yourself up to a good second-act curtain and it’s all a lot of nonsense.”

“That’s all right for you to say. You’re not wanted for murder.” I started to get up and she pushed me back down again. I considered swatting her.

“But that’s the point,” she went on. “You didn’t kill that old battle-axe, did you? Or did you?”

“Of course not, but…”

“Then as far as I can see all you did was not tell somebody you found her murdered—if she was murdered, which I doubt. It might have been an accident.”

“I took the book away.”

“That’s another thing. Why ever did you do that?”

“Well, it had my name on it and your name on it and that would have meant that we were there, and there you are.”

“So what? I wasn’t there.” Then her eyes got very round and she suddenly bent over as if to kiss me, but midway she yelped from the reminders that she wasn’t quite capable of such action yet. “But you, darling, you were trying to shield me. I think you’re wonderful. Let’s have another drink.” And we did and I began to feel better. It’s nice being thought a gentleman capable of shielding someone from something. We got all the pillows from the chairs and couch and put them on the floor and lay down with our drinks.

“Now then,” I said, after we were comfortable. “What were you about to be all stern about a minute ago?”

“It’s all really too simple. You’ve done all the wrong things so far just because you’re a ham at heart and you felt you had to pad your part. Anybody but an actor would have given a yell and, when people started to come running, said ‘look what I found’ but not you, you little Hamlet you…Oh, no…Well, anyway you’ve done it and that’s that. As it stands now we’ve got two choices. You can call up the police right now and tell them all about it. How you are going to alibi taking that filthy book I have no idea.”

“What’s the other choice?” I asked. “If I do that it will mean a lot of explaining. I’m liable for attempting to obstruct justice or concealing evidence, or something.”

“Then we could just assume that you did put your gloves back on or someone messed up your prints after you left, and then we could burn the Youth and Beauty Book to a crisp and cast the ashes off the Triboro Bridge.”

That sounded good so far.

“And then what?”

“Then we’ll just say no more about it.”

“Oh, fine. But don’t forget the book was open on her desk and the heavy of the piece might have seen our names as well as one Bobby LeB., whoever the hell he is.”

“Then I think a bit of dialogue with Mr. LeB. is clearly indicated. Very subtle-like…underplayed, but very, very fraught. Where does he live?”

“I don’t even know who he is much less where he lives.”

“Then maybe it’s all in the Youth and Beauty Book. Practically everything else is, God knows. Get it up!”

I got it up. The dried blood didn’t make the job any more appetizing. Nellie had not been the most efficient person in the world, and the book had, on the whole, somewhat the aspect of a sheaf of used Kleenex.

Slips of paper with phone numbers and random addresses were stuck all through, as well as some empty envelopes and dull-looking bills, even her bank book.

After a couple of hours we had to give up the search for Bobby LeB.’s address. Though, as Maggie pointed out, we certainly discovered a lot of unmarried actors and actresses whom we never suspected before, answering to the same phone numbers. The only information we could discover about Mr. LeB. was that the last year he had several appointments with Nellie, but not at any regular intervals and he was always entered only as Bobby LeB. or once or twice simply B. B., which we took to mean our boy.

I got interested in her bank book. Nellie was doing a great deal better financially than either of us would have imagined. You would have gathered from her books that what money she did have she made selling shoestrings and gum, along with Apple Annie, in theater lobbies. But according to her bank book she was almost in the surtax brackets. Every month for the last year there was a five-hundred-dollar lump deposit in addition to littler ones during the month. My nose began to twitch as I pointed this out to Maggie.

“Obviously blackmail.”

She was not impressed.

“Oh, really! It was a sad day for the world when you discovered circulating libraries.”

“But how else can you explain it? You know she didn’t cast that many shows.”

“Maybe she had an income. Maybe she had property. People do get five hundred dollars a month without resorting to blackmail.”

“But that would explain everything. Why she was murdered.”

“Here we go again. Timmy, look me in the eye.” I did. “Do you really believe all that junk?”

“No, I guess not. Not really.”

“Then that’s all right. Otherwise I might start worrying.” I stuffed the bank book back in the Youth and Beauty Book and tossed it on the floor.

“Well, what do we do now?”

“I know a man who used to be in naval intelligence during the war. I’ll bet he could help us. We could certainly use a little intelligence around here. Do you want me to call him up?”

“Let me try first before we send for the fleet,” I said.

“Well, I only wanted to be helpful. Have you eaten?”

“No. Have you?”

“I’m starved. Let’s go to Sardi’s for lunch.”

“Oh, no we won’t,” I said.

“The murderer always returns to the scene of his crime.”

“My pal!”

“Well, why not? You’ve done all the wrong things so far. One more couldn’t make much difference. We can drop in at Nellie’s office casual-like and you can get a quick swipe at that doorknob, and we can pitch that damned book in a corner of her office and just forget all about it.”

I helped her up off the floor.

“Okay. What can we lose?”

She went into the bedroom to dress while I had another drink, but it didn’t help much. I started to get depressed all over again. I took my drink and leaned against the bedroom door.

“You know, Maggie, if you cut down on your drinking and got more sleep you’d be a good-looking girl. Somebody might even marry you again.”

“Why, thank you, darling. But who? And why the overwhelming flattery? What have I done to deserve it?” She stopped brushing her hair and looked at me in the mirror. For some reason I felt a little embarrassed.

“It just seems kind of pointless all this nipping about, frittering around in the theater. Where does it get you?” She swiveled around from her dressing table.

“What about you?”

“Never mind me. Besides, I can’t do anything else. The theater’s all I know.”

“You did all right in the army. People told me. I asked.”

“Oh, the army. That’s different. Latch on to a good sergeant and you can’t miss.”

“It’s none of my business, I know,” Maggie said earnestly. “But do you mean to just keep on like this…you know what I mean…sort of…I mean, not ever…well, you know what I mean…” She finished lamely, strangely shy for her.

Yes, of course, I knew what she meant. And no, of course I didn’t mean to keep on like this. I was a man with a plan. A three-year plan. Operation Hollywood. I wanted to be an actor! So I made a bargain with myself while waiting in a cigarette camp near Le Havre to be shipped home. Three years to get a good part on Broadway or back to the salt mines.

It all seemed so simple—in Le Havre.

Who gets all the best parts in New York? Movie actors. Okay, so get to be a movie actor. How? Well, first you’ve got to be seen in the right places, get a little publicity. That’s the magic—publicity. And in the right places you’ll meet the right people who’ll maybe give you a small part and then maybe your picture in the paper and bingo!—a screen test and a contract. Six months on the coast and six months in New York for a play. Then every day is Christmas and you even plan whose stocking will be hanging up beside yours.

That was thirty-five months ago and gives you a rough idea how punchy you can get after four years in the army.

Four weeks more and Operation Hollywood would end with a whimper and with it my chance for the big money. But a bargain’s a bargain. I hope I hadn’t forgotten how to pilot a bulldozer.

There was no point in telling all this to Maggie—now. If things had only worked out differently…

“Timmy, what is the matter with you?”

“What? Oh, nothing. Just indulging in a little wishful thinking.”

“What about?”

“Hoping I’m not going to spend the rest of my all-too-brief life running away from a murder rap.”

“Oh.” Maggie turned back to the mirror and finished her face. I went over to the closet and got out her mink coat and helped her on with it. I wrapped my arms around her and stood that way for a moment. I needed someone to hang on to. I buried my face in the shoulder of her coat. It was cool and faintly perfumed. She reached up and patted my cheek.

“Now stop worrying. Everything’s going to be all right.”

While I was out in the hall putting on my coat she brought the Youth and Beauty Book.

“Here.” She handed it to me. “You ought to be able to drop it in a corner easily while you’re messing up your fingerprints.”

“I expect so.” I stuck it in my breast pocket. “But you know as well as I do that fingerprints or no, eventually they’re going to find out I was in Nellie’s office this morning.”

“Nonsense.”

“It isn’t nonsense. They always do.”

“How?”

“I don’t know, but they always do. One leaves spoors or something.”

“Does one? How awful.”

“And unless they find out who did it, I can’t prove I didn’t, when it comes right down to it.”

“Then by all means we must find out who did do it.”

It seemed so simple the way she said it.