The Horrible Man
THE HORRIBLE MAN
Ed Noon Mystery #18
Michael Avallone
STORY MERCHANT BOOKS
BEVERLY HILLS
2014
Copyright © 2014 by Susan Avallone and David Avallone. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author.
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Dedication:
For Denise and Alan Yates
two beautiful people
THE CAST OF CHARACTERS
… according to Sigmund Freud
Ed Noon a normal neurotic
Tommy Spanner a bisexual Momma's boy
Captain Michael Monks Holier-than-Thou
Christina Ralston a nymphomaniac
Melissa Mercer a woman with a lovely hair shirt
Garcia Lopez a desolate dwarf
Mady Lopez a king-sized wanton
Paul Arnet a sexual coward
Tops Billings professional voyeur
Stallings Spanner the father image
Cristo asexual
Raf Villez the country lover
The Misses Farrar, Kelly & Lambert Nature's toys for men
… and some of them never go into Analysis
I met a horrible man
And the horrible man met me
But the real horror was
That the horrible man was me
ANONYMOUS
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE: A CORPSE TO BEGIN WITH
CHAPTER TWO: THE SPANNER WRENCH
CHAPTER THREE: FRENCH WITHOUT EARS
CHAPTER FOUR: NOT SO PRETTY PICTURES
CHAPTER FIVE: COME BACK, LITTLE SHAM US
CHAPTER SIX: THREE GIRLS AND A GUY
CHAPTER SEVEN: WHAT PRICE GLORY?
CHAPTER EIGHT: THE NINTH LIFE
CHAPTER NINE: TEN AND BINGO!
CHAPTER TEN: DEADLY DWARF
CHAPTER ELEVEN: FUNNY YOU DON'T LOOK HAPPY
CHAPTER TWELVE: THE GREAT RICH FATHER
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: WHO'S GOT THE BODY?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: THE RICH DO CRY INTO SILK HANDKERCHIEFS
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: THE HORRIBLE MAN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: MIRROR, MIRROR
ONE
A CORPSE TO BEGIN WITH
□ Spanner's corpse was by the door when I came in.
The Tommy Spanner Murder Case made Page One all over the country but it would take a whole book to explain why a murdered playboy has any connection at all with the President of these United States. Playboy and The Congressional Record are not exactly related publications. But, in the end, that's the way it worked out.
Spanner couldn't have been any further from the White House than he was lying dead in the elegant foyer of his Fifth Avenue playground.
His face wore a look of surprise that anybody could do such nasty things to him. For one thing, a bonehandled steak knife of some size was jutting from his chest. For another, his inconsiderate killer had removed his trousers. And boxer shorts. He lay half-dressed, lying on his back, spread-eagled in the short but wide foyer. It was distinctly indecent to leave a dead man in that condition. The merry men of the Homicide Department moving all over his apartment were having a field day with bum jokes. In life, Spanner had been the playboy with the most restless liver in Manhattan. In death, he was stiffer than a gallstone.
Captain Michael Monks, the Police Department's grim answer to TV cop shows, motioned me into the bedroom. He looked unhappy, as usual. And anachronistic as hell with the gaudy walls of Spanner's boudoir for background. There were about fifty wall glossies of nudes rampant, all shapes, sizes, colours and dimensions. Nothing pornographic, of course. Just aesthetic, artistic variations of la divina donna. Oh, yeah.
It was a Monday and it was raining and the pattering beat of water on the wide french doors leading out to a patio that overlooked some eleven storeys of sidewalk, added an eerie counterpoint to Monks' words.
"I hear Spanner phoned you today, Ed."
"You hear good. He said he was having his hands full with some dame who was jealous about being number ninety-seven on the list."
"Was he that good?"
I shrugged, indicating the wallpaper design. "He inherited about a million bucks from his Daddy's shoe stores, a face like Cary Grant, subscribed to Playboy and lived exactly the same way. Just ask your saloon editors—Earl Wilson, Leonard Lyons, Frank Farrell and Company."
Monks forefingered the air. He doesn't read columnists. "He name the dame?"
"Never got around to naming her. Said he'd call back later. That was around ten-thirty this morning."
"He'll need a ouija board," Monks said sourly. "He died instantly. Found him where you see him now. Shirt, tie, no pants, no long underwear. He sure as hell saw the dame who chopped him. The lights were still on when we got here. Blood from the wound ran out under the door. The dame living next door got a glimpse when she came home from the movies, screamed, and here we are."
"Dame?"
"A grandmother. Maybe seventy-five. A Mrs. Staley. Retired dress designer. She hardly ever saw Spanner, she says. Though she heard him often enough when he gave wild parties which was about every other day. Not his type, I take it."
I looked around the plush bedroom. Tommy Spanner had known how to live even if he hadn't known how to die. His home was something out of an Oriental movie. Silken paisley drapes, satin sofas with too many pillows and bolsters, tapestries from the Arabian Nights fantasies some adults have. And all those billowing nudes rampant on fields of purple, crimson and gold. I didn't have to see his pyjamas. They had to be screaming eyesores. The only thing missing from the Spanner boudoir was a Turkish water pipe.
"Farouk slept here," I offered, not feeling funny at all. "Any leads, Mike?"
Monks consulted his worn, black leatherette notebook. "He had three visitors today. Blonde, brunette and redhead. They seem to be from the chorus of the Broadway musical Hello, Suckers! The Misses Farrar, Kelly and Lambert."
"Dolls, of course."
"Beauts. Seems Spanner liked to keep them coming and going in shifts. We checked his appointment book. Farrar showed at eleven, Kelly at three and Lambert at five."
"Farrar must be something special. Four hours, for her."
He ignored that. "Somebody's working the night-shift. Lambert left at seven and a Miss Christina Ralston is due here at nine-thirty. About forty minutes from now."
"Then Lambert was the last to see him alive, according to the record." I sighed. "He had a lot to live for, obviously. But he could have been just the friendly type at that."
"Oh, sure. About as chummy as his murderer was."
I rubbed my nose. "Do you think he answered the door with his pants off?"
Mike Monks is a family man who has never been able to understand Kraft-Ebbing, frowned on the Kinsey Report and absolutely hates books like Psychopathia Sexualis though he's run into every type of deviate in his line of work.
"I think so, yes. Pretty hard to imagine the use or sense of his killer undressing him after stabbing him, isn't it?"
"Maybe so. But if we're dealing with a woman scorned—well, they have funny ideas when they kill for love."
"Mr. Noon," Monks reprimanded me. "I called you here because your name was jotted down in Spanner's appointment book out there on the desk by the telephone. Don't make me regret my decision to let you hang around."
"Open and shut here," he growled. "This guy got the business from a broad. Nothing was stolen or taken that we can see and no man would ever use a steak knife if it was simply an emotional kill. Not from my experience. They use guns or clubs or a piece of furniture. Besides, we've questioned the three chorus girls. Each one hates the other since they were all trying to graduate from the chorus into this set-up. So suspects we got by the bushel. Including this Ralston dame when she shows up."
"Does the steak knife belong in Spanner's kitchen?"
"You really are a detective sometimes, aren't you? No, it doesn't."
"I could have told you that."
Monks' eyes narrowed. "Such as?"
"Child's play, Michael When I got here, Spanner was laid out on his back near the door. He just answered it and your dame stepped in, knifed him and took off. She certainly brought the knife with her. And I seriously doubt if she stole the knife on a previous visit, walked around with it for a while and then came back to use it and leave it."
Monks scowled.
"Go sit somewhere and smoke a butt. And think about this. I've got some routine stuff to take care of." He vanished from the bedroom quickly, in that lumbering walk of his, joining the muffled thunder of his Homicide boys at work. The fingerprint dusting, picture-taking uproar that has a sound all its own. There wouldn't be a corner of Spanner's apartment overlooked in the search for clues that might lead to a murderer's identity. I'd seen it too many times to want a second look. There's something infinitely macabre about poking into a man's death, no matter how you look at it.
I sat down on Tommy Spanner's Queen Anne bed and sank about a foot in the counterpane. It was a place for an orgy, all right. There was enough room to accommodate the chorus of Hello, Suckers! let alone a mere four butterflies.
The furnishings, the atmosphere and the equipment were letter perfect. All that had been required were agreeable playmates and Spanner had had them by the score. Hail, Erotica!
A disagreeable one had killed him. Farrar, Kelly or Lambert? Or some discarded moth from the busy past. Or this Ralston dame who was showing up at nine-thirty. It was now a quarter of the hour. I took Monks' fatherly advice, lit a Camel and lay back on the bed, trying hard not to submerge. It was a delicious sensation. Delightfully erotic. Made you think of Sex and nothing else.
Thinking about Sex gave me the answer. Half the answer, anyway. After all, what reason could there be for finding a body with half its clothes on, if you begin from the premise that such exposure is intentional and—sick, sick, sick.
When Monks came back to the bedroom, he found me whistling.
"This is no party, Ed," he rumbled, wanting some amount of decorum for the dead.
"Sorry." I eased off the bed and stopped whistling. "Listen, Michael. Wouldn't you say that a man with all this working for him would be pretty free and easy as far as his love life was concerned?"
"Yeah. I would. But what are you getting at?"
"Let me finish. Even assuming Tommy Spanner might have been a weirdo, wouldn't it be just as easy to assume he would be the type to think it was cute to answer the door completely naked rather than with just his pants off?"
Monks squinted. "Suppose he was dressing when the doorbell rang and everything was ship-shape except the pants. He could have answered it that way, being the libertine you say he was."
I shook my head. "No. He had a tie knotted around his throat. He was completely dressed, except for the pants. Nobody dresses that way. Pants last. Do you? And where are they by the way?"
"In the other room. Hung over the sofa. Why?"
"Tommy wouldn't have to dress if he was ready for a tryst. Why not his pyjamas or smoking jacket or as I say, just plain naked?"
"You're losing me, Ed? What are you driving at?"
"Just this. Tommy not being naked means something. If he had all his clothes off, he'd just be a naked stiff and you'd misss what I think the killer was trying to say. Or show. One part of the body would be no more important than another part, if Spanner was naked. But this way, half-dressed, our attention has to be drawn to one focal point. And no other."
Monks goggled. "Do I hear you straight, Ed?"
"The principal male tendon, Michael," I said evenly. "Unless you haven't noticed, Tommy Spanner was hopelessly short-changed in that department. Go take another look."
There was a sadness in Monks' eyes but he no longer quarrelled with me. "Damn," was all he said.
"Somebody was showing him up," I went on. "Showing the world that the image of Tommy Spanner as a great lover had to be a myth. He didn't have the equipment to start with. You see?"
"I see," Monks snapped. "And I don't like it. It's dirty and indecent and a helluva line for an investigation to follow."
"Sorry. But all you have to ask are the Misses Farrar, Lambert and Kelly. They ought to know if anybody does. If Spanner slept with them or didn't—you'll have the answer, either way. There's just no other reason for Spanner's killer to leave him on the floor like that, exposed so pitifully."
"You get funny ideas, Ed. All your theory would go up in smoke if it happened that Spanner answered the door dressed just the way we found him. You know that, don't you? He answered the door, he gets chopped, the killer runs. Principal male tendon—" He snorted out loud. "Good Christ, where the hell did you dig that expression up?"
He didn't want an answer, really. He was through with me. I edged towards the bedroom door. "I guess I'll run along and leave you with the case. No money in it for me. You'll get your killer, Mike. Could be any one of a dozen dames."
He watched me go with that sad expression on his rugged face. I waved and he waved back. When I stepped past Tommy Spanner's silent corpse, still uncovered in the foyer, one last look was all I needed to confirm my distasteful theory.
Not all the money, drugs or wishful thinking in the world could have made Tommy Spanner satisfy a normal woman in bed.
He had been a man cursed with the puniness of a three year old boy.
I took the elevator down to the Fifth Avenue sidewalk thinking all about a world so screwy that very few things ever came out even. In that gorgeous mood, I drove home to Central Park West. It hadn't been much of an office day. Nobody needed a private detective on a rainy Monday. Melissa Mercer and I had spent most of the office hours deciding on which colour would best augment the environs of the Ed Noon Private Investigations agency. We had settled on a pale tapioca brown to match my tan and her native pigmentation. Melissa is a Negress, indispensably a human being and secretary and my own personal answer to the Civil Rights question.
Manhattan was dark, moody and miserable as I wheeled the Oldsmobile through Central Park. The rain had darkened everything so that the glare of the city's neon was a trickling, diffuse splash of light on the horizon. The park was a forest of trees looming ominously.
I forgot all about Tommy Spanner. Like I said, it was a case for the Homicide Department.
Famous last words. Like the hen-pecked husband's classic remark on the day of the wedding: "Darling, you've made me the happiest man in the world . . ."
Monks didn't get in touch with me until the next afternoon. I was at my desk, having second thoughts about pale tapioca brown because a bright new sun was flooding the furniture and giving me an idea what a solid gold office might look like. Melissa Mercer was at the bank, depositing some cheques. The office was quiet except for a noisy fly rattling around the hooded lamp on a small desk in the corner.
Monks sounded happy but weary. He had found Tommy Spanner's murderer. It was the Ralston dame, coming back at nine-thirty, to keep her skirts clean so the cops wouldn't come looking for her or wonder why she had stayed away.
"She broke, Ed," Monks said. "I worked on your angle and it all came tumbling out of her. He'd led her on for some reason, she wanted to be his playmate all the
way and share the loot but he didn't deliver in the bedroom and she got mad, lost her head and killed him. The steak knife was from her own apartment."
"A good-looking dame?"
"Like Hedy Lamarr in the good old days. Thanks for your help, Ed."
"What did she say about undressing him like that?"
There was a pause. "That really sent her off. She laughed like a hyena and cursed worse than any woman I ever heard. We practically had to straitjacket her to get her downtown."
I watched the fly zoom in my direction and settle lazily on the corner of my desk. The sun of the afternoon gilded his wings.
"Spanner was playing with dynamite," Monks concluded, "and he didn't know it. This Ralston dame is a hospital case. Glad we flagged her down."
The fly was rubbing his wings together.
"How bad, Mike?"
"Bad enough," Captain Michael Monks said. "We found out she was under private care with a psychiatrist until she couldn't make the payments anymore. That's why she was so hot for Spanner."
"Let me guess," I said.
"Nymphomania. That's the word."
The fly took off from the desk and arced for the open window. I sat back in my swivel chair and wondered if female flies were ever bothered by such a condition. Monks hung up, rumbling more thanks at me.
They make a lot of jokes about it but there's nothing funny about nymphomania.
Ask Tommy Spanner if you ever get to see him.
Wherever he is.
That was the moment when the phone rang. The special phone. The red-and-white-and-blue telephone on my desk that nobody but myself, not even Melissa Mercer, can ever speak into. People who haven't the electrical register of my own particular voice would hear nothing but a Donald Duck scramble. The phone was invented that way, designed that way and in truth, was a hot line that ended directly on the desk of the President of the United States. Puzzled, I swept the receiver to my ear.