The Tall Dolores Read online

  THE CAST OF CHARACTERS

  … in the order of their height

  HARRY HUNTER 6′6″

  DOLORES 6′3″

  ED NOON 6′

  RENO 6′

  ROCKY 6′

  KINNEY 5′10″

  MONKS 5′9″

  CHARLEY FLINT 5′8″

  SAM FOLEY 5′7″

  ALMA WHEELER 5′6″

  BILLIE TOY 5′4″

  DOC CLARKE 5′2″

  … and several horizontal people

  The Tall Dolores

  Michael Avallone

  STORY MERCHANT BOOKS

  BEVERLY HILLS

  2012

  Copyright © 2012 Susan Avallone and David Avallone. All rights reserved.

  http://mouseauditorium.tumblr.com/

  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.

  Story Merchant Books

  9601 Wilshire Boulevard #1202

  Beverly Hills CA 90210

  http://www.storymerchant.com/books.html

  For Stevie—who is considerably shorter

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ONE

  I’ll begin by telling you she was the tallest girl that ever came into my office. But tall isn’t the word for it. Not really. As spotty as my schooling was, I can do better than that.

  Dolores was a hell of a lot more than tall. She was huge, statuesque. A Glamazon. A regular Empire State Building of female feminine dame. And all woman, besides.

  Six feet three in her stocking feet. Don’t scoff. Don’t laugh at the notion. Don’t even faint. Put black pumps with three-inch heels on those feet and you’ll get a rough sketch of the shadow she threw across my threshold the day she crossed it.

  Believe me, I wasn’t prepared for the shadow. Or the woman that brought it in.

  The private-eye business was having a bad year and the closest I had gotten to some real green dough was a shadowing job for some Park Avenue doctor who suspected his wife of laying down on her wifely duties. For some other John. I had done myself proud. Photographs, a honey of a dictaphone recording when Lover Boy came in and the lights went out. The doctor was a real grateful guy. The job had been worth a cool thousand, but that had been three months ago and the money had run out-thanks to my passion for comfortable living. So when Dolores showed up, I was worn down to the tail, as they say in Benny’s back room.

  I looked up from the desk in the mouse auditorium that passes for my office, and blinked.

  A gigantic silhouette had fallen across the glazed glass of the door. A feminine silhouette. That bust line was unmistakable.

  ED NOON—PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS, the modest four-inch lettering on the glass, lost its place in the sun. For exactly three minutes.

  I consulted my watch, coughed, straightened my tie, and poured myself a drink. Aside from hallucinations brought on by extreme hunger, I could find no excuse for the feminine fantasy on the other side of the door.

  I’m a game guy. I took a chance.

  “Come on in,” I sang out. “The joint’s insured.”

  Come in she did. The shadow faded and Dolores in the flesh was a little less terrifying but still plenty disconcerting.

  “Ed Noon—that you?”

  The question didn’t falter out of her. It just erupted from deep down in a chest, that at a very conservative estimate, I pegged at 50.

  “It’s the only name I’ll endorse a check with. What can I do for you?” In spite of the gag, I had the impression I was whispering.

  “Save the wisecracks, Noon. I’m too big to kid around with.” Her words were loud but she sounded pleased. As if she had found something she was looking for. In this case, the something was me. Which just about describes how the Tall Dolores made me feel. Not like anything—just something.

  As for her being pleased about me for some reason or other, well, that made her the first dame since my mother who ever saw anything in me. Pleasing women is one department I never rated a blue ribbon in.

  Dolores sat down and filled the only other chair in the place. What I mean filled. She overflowed in it. Not fat, mind you. Just big, shapely size. And a feminine kind of size, if you know what I mean.

  I figured it was about time to assert myself. I smiled.

  “Well, lady. Start. Begin someplace. The beginning is a good place. Your husband has just discovered it is spring and there’s a girl…”

  “There is no husband. And no girl.” She outstared me. “But I do want you to find Harry Hunter for me.”

  “Hunter?” Her stare convinced me to stop clowning. “Got a picture?”

  I admit I wanted to see the sort of a guy a tall number like Dolores needed to hold hands with.

  She dug into a purse that looked like a compact in her large, well-formed fingers. I reached for the small photo she handed over the desk.

  It was nothing much to work on. Nothing for a Sherlock Holmes private like me. Just a head-and-shoulders shot of a very normal arrangement of eyes, teeth, nose, and ears. Not even a mustache. I was disappointed. I’d expected a cross between Johnny Weismuller and Man Mountain Dean.

  “Not much to work on, Miss…”

  “Dolores. Just Dolores. My name isn’t necessary.”

  “You’re perfectly right about that, Dolores.” I’d decided to start throwing my weight around. “Only your money is. I ask two hundred dollars as a retainer. If I can’t find this Hunter for you, you get half of it back. If I do, you dish out one hundred more.”

  Her face smiled. It was the last thing you ever noticed about her. Her face, that is. It was a fairly pretty face topped by shiny black hair, but something about her tremendous size robbed it of charm.

  “I’m glad my size doesn’t influence your manners, Noon. I want you to be the sort of man who can’t be buffaloed. Harry buffaloes very easy. Two hundred is agreeable. Do I pay you now?”

  “Not until you fill in some of the details. I’ve been in all the jails in this town already. You have to help me decide if this is worth working on.”

  I dug a pencil and pad out of the remainder of my lunch and assorted scraps on the desk.

  “Noon, I’ll level with you.” Her eyes pinned me down. “Harry Hunter is my man. The only one I’ll ever love. The only one I’ll ever want…”

  Booming words sound awfully corny alongside string music like that. I held up my hands.

  “Hold on, Dolores. Is he missing or isn’t he? Did he take a powder on you—is that it?”

  She smiled apologetically, Dolores did. Dolores who could go through life not having to apologize for anything.

  “I see I’d better begin at the beginning.”

  “It helps.”

  Dolores talked and I scribbled. My notes weren’t in shorthand. I’m even briefer than that. My pals, the one or two I have, get a kick ou
t of my “Business File” as it is humorously called. Well, you never know when the cops are going to walk in and inventory your books. So I make my notes pretty cryptic. If you ever drop into the mouse auditorium, I can still show you my file on the Tall Dolores thing.

  HUNTER*** runaway steer, Big Six

  DOLORES tall saddle to be studded in May

  $5,000 investment on riding equipment—barn door to be closed as soon as possible.

  Roughly, it meant that Harry Hunter, who was all of six feet six inches himself, had promised to marry Dolores No-Last-Name in May but had taken off at the last minute with five grand of her savings that was going toward a big wedding and follow-up honeymoon in Arizona. Harry was a rodeo hand in the same circus that Dolores was headlined in as the Tall Dolores, Shapliest Amazon in the World.

  Hunter’s being a giant himself partly explained Dolores’ desire to catch up with him again. Must have been love at first height if you’ll excuse the pun.

  “It’s not the money, you understand, Noon. Frankly, Harry is the only man that could ever satisfy me. You should know what that means to a woman in a country where the average man is under six feet…”

  “I have a rough idea. But why did he take off? I think it works both ways. A guy as big as this Harry of yours wouldn’t run into many big girls either.”

  Her eyes looked small in her broad face.

  “Harry wouldn’t run away from me. Something must have happened to him. He was to meet me here in New York two days ago, the fifteenth—and here it’s Friday and he still hasn’t shown up. I gave him the money to hold because I thought it would be safer for him to hold it.”

  I could have given her a stiff argument there but I let it ride.

  “Do you know of any place he might go in New York? Any friends he might have? You can’t tell. Harry might have celebrated his last days of bachelorhood and overdone it.” I laughed. “I wouldn’t bet against his sleeping off a nice good drunk in some cheap hotel somewhere in our fair metropolis. It’s happened plenty of times before this.”

  She shook off the idea.

  “Not when you know that Harry never touched a drop. It was a laugh back in the circus how he got sick once on a jigger of rum. No, Harry didn’t drink. For a guy as big as him, it was kind of funny to see.”

  I put my pencil down. She hadn’t given me enough to doodle with. Except the notion that her looks and brand of vocabulary didn’t quite balance. Sort of like the tomboy being made to behave in front of company at dinner.

  “Well, you haven’t given me much to work on. Although I’ll admit I won’t have much trouble picking him out of a crowd.”

  “I’m sorry.” She really looked sorry. “We met in the circus last year. Harry never talked much. He came from Montana, Helena, I think, but that was all he ever said about it. But—you’ve handled this sort of thing before, haven’t you?”

  “I have.” I cut her short because my ears were beginning to ache from the thunder of her voice. “Drink, Dolores?”

  She nodded. I poured two neat ones. She put hers away like a veteran. She was quite a girl, by and large. You just couldn’t get by how large she was.

  “Okay, Dolores. I’ll get started on this. Where are you staying?”

  “Hotel. The Yale. Room 1705. Call me as soon as you have any kind of word.”

  I made a note of it.

  “There are lots of kinds of words and this has the looks of something that’s going to take a little time.”

  She got to her feet. I got the impression my own six feet of manhide wasn’t making a dent at all on her. I never felt shorter in my life.

  I got the two hundred right then. She handed them over without a complaint. Two brisk, crisp, brand new C notes. At that moment Benjamin Franklin was my favorite American.

  Just then my phone rang. She jumped for a second, then relaxed. I motioned her to wait, and juggled the receiver to my ear.

  “Ed Noon speaking.”

  “Hello, Ed. How’s crime?” It was Sam Foley, one of my very few friends and possibly the very last of a long line of good lawyers.

  “Still paying off very nicely, thank you. How’s tricks, Sam?”

  “Trickier than ever. You doing anything?” He sounded anxious.

  “Just got started on something hot, Sam. But if you need a smart young man to do the office work…”

  He laughed in my ear. “It’ll keep, Ed. Just watch yourself, kid. Foley has discovered some more vice in our police department. Look, Ed. Stick around the office tomorrow. I may need you for some leg work. I’m not as young as I’d like to be. Okay with you, Ed?”

  “Sure thing, Sam.” Dolores was beginning to look impatient. “Give me a ring.”

  “Two to one it’s a blonde. Or a redhead.” His chuckle was old and wise. “Take care of yourself, Ed.” The receiver clicked in my ear.

  “If you’ll excuse me, Noon. I have to be going.” She was giving me my cue.

  I walked her to the door, feeling like one of those little tugs that guide the Queen Mary out of the harbor. When she had finally gone and her huge shadow withdrawn from the blackout of my name on the glazed glass, I had another drink. Not the weak stuff that was always on the desk. Private stock that I kept in one of the desk drawers.

  Great business, this private-peeper racket. You get paid to look through keyholes, mess up fresh playboys for old guys who wanted to scare them off their child brides, find missing persons who usually preferred to stay lost, and get your own face pushed in once in awhile. For a fee, of course.

  I’m buck-hungry like the rest of my fellow Americans. And not crazy about taxes either. So money dominated all the time I had. My time was anybody’s who could pay for it.

  And now the Tall Dolores wanted me to find Harry (also Tall) Hunter for her for the fifth part of a grand. Well, it was worth it. I’d done things for a part of a grand before that weren’t so grand.

  Where to begin? The police morgue would be a fair start. Missing persons make an awful habit of turning up in those air-cooled drawers down there. There were a dozen routine starts, all of which would help me get my wind, but it was a hot day. A hot baseball day.

  I turned on my little portable. The Giants and Dodgers were brawling at the PG and just this once I had a five-spot on the Giants. Until Dolores had walked in with that big retainer, I didn’t have the money to make a down payment on a cup of coffee. I only gamble when I have no chips anyway.

  It was around the seventh inning and my five dollars was fading fast because Brooklyn was hitting Hearn like they owned him when the phone rang again. I turned the set down and reached for the receiver. It felt sticky in my fingers.

  It was Charley Flint, my personal contact down at Police Headquarters. For twenty bucks a tip, Charley forgot his policeman’s code and gave me first call on anything that looked like an opportunity for a private fish to join the school and get ahead in life.

  “Ed, one of our patrol cars put through a flash. Stiff on the steps of the Museum of Natural History. Central Park side. Looks like a knifing.”

  “So what’s in it for me, friend Flint?”

  “Geez, Ed, I dunno. But this stiff sounds pretty peculiar.”

  “If there’s more, Charley, spill it. A dead guy would have to have at least two heads to be peculiar.”

  “Ed, he was packing five G’s! That peculiar enough? Imagine killing a guy and leaving that kind of dough on him for the department to find! Doesn’t make sense, does it?”

  I catch on quick.

  “Description, Charley—was there a description?”

  “Yeah. Wait a mo.” I heard a rustling like when paper is handled. “Christ, yes. The stiff is a giant. Six feet plus.”

  I whistled through my teeth.

  “Can you use it, Ed? Our usual deal?”

  “I can use it, Charley. It’s Christmas. Santa will send you your twenty.”

  “Fine, Ed. It’s been a tough week.”

  “All over, Charley. Bye.”

&nb
sp; I hung up. The neon lights of the chop suey joint across the street were blinking on and off. Just like my brains.

  I kept thinking of the Tall Dolores and five thousand dollars and Harry Hunter.

  The runaway steer had been chopped down. There was nothing to saddle anymore. Except possibly the saddle. And that was the Tall Dolores.

  Somebody’s timing was a little too precious for words. I decided to get down to the Museum of Natural History as fast as the law allowed. Mrs. Dooley, my old high-school history teacher, would have been proud of me.

  Going to the museum at my age.

  TWO

  Harry Hunter was tall, too. What was left of him. As I got out of the jalopy I laughingly list as a car on my tax form, I could see Harry Hunter was tall.

  Monks and his stooge Kinney, two fine specimens of the Homicide Department, were standing over him. Even flat on his back with a dirty piece of canvas flung over him, Harry Hunter was impressive. The tips of big black shoes were a long way from the crown of disheveled black hair that barely poked out from the other end of the canvas.

  Rainwater was gurgling in the gutters as I sauntered over. The rain had been a brief tear-jerker and now it was getting dark. A squad car dotted both corners of the museum entrance. Monks’ car was cut at an angle into the curb as if he had just arrived on the scene. That small knot of people with rubber in their necks had gathered already but a pair of blue uniforms were ringing them off. Monks’ orders no doubt. Police, business or not, he hated crowds.

  Monks saw me first. It was obvious. His mouth turned down on his cigarette and he grunted something to Kinney. The stooge looked at me through his college face with his usual quota of scorn for Ed Noon. It was mutual. They were both poison to me.

  “Good day, gentlemen.” I started off with polite cheeriness because I knew it irritated the hell out of them. Because they knew I was rubbing it in.

  “You again. It never rains but it pours.” Monks’ fine dog face with its coarse features and prominent eyes, ears, nose, and mouth screwed up. “Go away, Noon. You draw flies.”