The Spitting Image Read online

  The Spitting Image

  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 Ed Morris

  THE BEST WRITING PAL A GUY EVER HAD

  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

  THE CAST OF CHARACTERS

  in the order of their birthstones…

  ED NOON

  Amethyst

  MONKS

  Diamond

  RANDALL CRANDALL

  Emerald

  ANTON

  Pearl

  AUGUST WEXLER

  Ruby

  DOGGIE

  Sardonyx

  BULL

  Sapphire

  THE WEXLER TWINS

  Opal

  BILL MURDOCK

  Topaz

  HADLEY

  Turquoise

  SANDERSON, JAMES T.

  Garnet

  … and several fresh tombstones …

  ONE

  She came into my office like the first five bars of “Tiger Rag.” She was worried. She didn’t bother to close the door and got close enough to me so I could read it in her eyes. She was a brunette edition, pocket size, but her binding wasn’t what you usually found in bookstores.

  Words tumbled out of her before I could even get up from behind my desk.

  “You Ed Noon?—you’ve got to protect me—”

  I held up my hand like a minister sealing the marriage rites. That helped her get her breath by cutting her short.

  Frightened as she obviously was, her voice was music too. Not “Tiger Rag,” not Bop, not Dixieland the way it ought to have been with her equipment. But string music. Strictly string.

  “Hold on, sister—”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean to—”

  The fright got out of the way to allow some Technicolor to spread up her white throat into her face. She turned in ladylike confusion. But I could see her shoulders heaving, could hear the breath puffing out of her. She’d been running. Running hard.

  “Miss—it’s eight o’clock in the morning. If you need a private detective at this ungodly hour, you must be in a tight fix.”

  “Oh, I am, Mr. Noon. It’s Anton. Anton is following me. You’ve got to protect me from him. He’ll do something awful, he’ll—”

  Now she sounded like Alice worrying about the White Queen. And not a day older than twenty-one. I smiled, trying awfully hard not to make myself leer.

  “Whoa, lady. If you’ve had a bad scare, fast talk doesn’t help. Here.” I kicked out my best chair. “Sit down and take a deep breath. Take two. I’ll close the door while you collect some oxygen.”

  She sat down with an effort, crossing a pair of silken legs that were strictly weapons to be used on men. There was nothing wrong with her face either. She could skip all the cosmetics and beauty aids that had ever been invented. I tabbed her clothes. Fur stole, clothing with dash, and price labels that I expected would embarrass a housewife. Or make her strangle with envy.

  I yawned as I swung the door of the mouse auditorium which is the given name of my office. I hadn’t been getting much shut-eye of late. If this was another client, I wasn’t going to be getting much in the near future.

  Dames, especially the good-looking ones, were always getting into trouble. This was a very good-looking one. That meant only one thing to me. A lot of trouble.

  I felt more awake behind the desk. I folded my hands and tried to look like I belonged there.

  “Okay, Miss. Tell me all. And don’t spare the sordid details. I grew up in a pretty rough neighborhood myself.”

  She wet pretty red lips. That made me look at her face.

  “There’s so much to tell. I don’t know where to—oh, dear—” Her eyes flitted to the door. But the glass was still intact, ED NOON. PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS shone clear and bright against the light in the hall. No silhouettes obscured it.

  “Forget the door, Miss. Once you cross that threshold, you’ve hired me. I’m on your side until I hear different. Who’s Anton?”

  “Oh—” she colored again. “Anton is our French chauffeur. April hired him—that’s my sister. We’re twins. We live on Park Avenue. Anton’s been following me. I’ve got to find out why. April put him up to it. I’m sure of it.”

  “Okay, April is your sister, you’re twins, Anton is a chauffeur. Hired by her, I suppose, since he scares you. Now, who are you and why should the family chauffeur follow you?”

  “Why—I’m June Wexler.” She made it sound like Garbo or Tallulah or Eleanor Roosevelt.

  I’m afraid I laughed.

  “This is great. April and June. Well, Happy Calendar. What’s Anton’s last name—March?”

  “I fail to see the humor in it, Mr. Noon.”

  “Can it.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I said can it. And don’t be so formal, Miss Wexler. You speak a better brand of English than you’ve been dishing out. You’re no Bryn Mawr. I know you now. The famous Wexler twins. Darlings of café society. You use money for carpets. The old folks are dead and gone, but the oil fortune Pop put together is still here and gradually being taken apart by you and your sister, dollar by dollar, fur coat by Cadillac. You’re no lady. Last week you kicked a cop in Central Park because he wouldn’t let you feed champagne to the seals in the Zoo. That wasn’t nice. You were wearing high heels. They hurt. Don’t deny it. You made all the papers.”

  She relaxed in my chair. Her eyes leveled at me. What I mean leveled. The frightened-young-thing look fell from her like a coat she was no longer interested in wearing.

  “Got a cigarette?”

  I gave her one.

  “Match?”

  I gave her one. She took it with one manicured hand.

  “You’re no gentleman,” she said.

  “What an opening,” was all I had to offer.

  She dropped the match on the top of the desk with a curl of her red mouth. Deliberately, she dug into a gold-trimmed purse and brought out a diamond-studded cigarette lighter that would have been a fair swap for my whole office.

  She had struck the match but hadn’t used it.

  It was still burning. The desk wasn’t African mahogany or anything like that. But it was still my desk. An old friend of my feet, as a matter of cold fact.

  “Beat it, sister. Your money isn’t good enough. The handle on the door works real good.”

  “Proud, aren’t you?”

  “P
articular. You need me like you need an annuity.”

  “Oh, but I really do.” She had stopped acting like royalty and gone back to being a little girl. That got me mad.

  “Yeah, sure. Listen. I don’t like dizzy socialites with money to burn. I’m a social-conscious bastard. You’re not in any real trouble. So Anton has a pash for you and you led him on and now you can’t shake him off. Well, tough. Okay. Fire the poor slob and let it go at that. I’m roughing up nobody for a miserable fifty bucks. Not even for a thousand. When you cry wolf, sister, don’t blame the wolf. You were born to be the lamb that went astray. Let it go at that.”

  Miss Wexler got to her feet and put her arms down to hold the desk, palms down. The silver fur stole around her soft neck trickled off her shoulders and fell to the floor. A volcano was going on inside her and the bubbles were erupting like hot lava.

  “You sonofabitch—” she started off fine. Then she went on from there, all the way back to the time the original Noon was swinging through the trees, on through a million years of low animal life, right up to the bestial present. She ended with “sonofabitch” again.

  “Congratulations,” I said. “You repeated yourself only once. And only right there at the very end.”

  She changed her strategy again. She pouted and got helpless in the standard feminine way.

  “But aren’t you going to protect me against Anton?”

  “Miss Wexler, at the risk of repeating myself, I think Anton should hire me to protect himself against you. The answer again is no.” I spelled it for her.

  She started to put on another act and I was beginning to think she had passed up a great bet in Hollywood when there was an interruption. A noisy one.

  The door of the office crashed open and a large rat came into the mouse auditorium. Human species. It wore a chauffeur’s uniform replete with well-polished buttons and the Wexler stamp of richness. It didn’t take much to figure that this was the unpopular Anton. The rat label fitted him because he had the sort of face where all the features come to a nosy point, a short hair-brush style skull, and the quality of looking at you as though you were a choice piece of cheese.

  I got up from behind the desk. This is always an effective maneuver with clients. Male ones especially. It gives you a good opportunity to tell just how many inches taller they are. Anton towered over me like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

  “You’re just in time, Anton. Miss Wexler was just leaving and I imagine she’ll need the car to get back to the family estate.”

  “Miss Wexler—you are all right? I was worried.” His voice was a bad combination of Boyer and Ezio Pinza.

  “That makes two of you,” I said. “Miss Wexler has been worried about you.” I looked at her. “Haven’t you, Miss Wexler?” It was her move. She could drop the whole thing right there or make a nasty accusation.

  Women. She was busy powdering her nose as if she had just been chewing the rag with a private detective while she was waiting for her chauffeur.

  “Oh, it was nothing, Anton. Mr. Noon is an old friend of mine. I got tired waiting in the car. So I ducked up here. I’m sorry I left you so abruptly. Was I gone long?”

  “Only a half hour, Miss Wexler.” He made a show of plucking at his uniformed sleeve. I lamped a watch that he couldn’t possibly have afforded on his chauffeur’s salary. And it wasn’t a family heirloom, either. It was a diamond-crowded, solid chunk of gold. “When I obtained the cigarettes at that drugstore and returned to find you absent I became alarmed. I hope this gentleman—”

  The suggestive look he gave me was too much for my early-morning nerves. I hadn’t had my coffee yet. And when I haven’t had my coffee, I’m not as nice as I can normally be.

  “This gentleman has had enough. I suggest you two take French leave right now. I haven’t had my breakfast yet.”

  Anton’s shoulders flexed and one booted foot took a step toward me. Now he looked like a rat who had taken boxing lessons.

  “I do not like your tone, Noon. Or your cut. Kindly apologize to Miss Wexler.”

  “Anton, please—” Miss Wexler was still acting. She really didn’t want to stop him. But her manner told him, in a ladylike way of course, that I had gotten fresh, that she didn’t want to make any trouble. Oh, yeah.

  Anton was sucked in like a fish.

  “Apologize instantly.” His face darkened menacingly. That was all I was having.

  “Look, fellow. This is my office. It’s a crummy little dump but they ask me to pay the rent. Not anybody else. I pick my own company. Including clients. That lets you and your girl boss out. She flew in here with a cock-and-bull story I wouldn’t buy from a comic strip. And all of a sudden you pop up looking very worried and concerned as hell. If you two are playing footsie with each other, it’s none of my business. But do it somewhere else besides my office. I’m a busy boy and I can’t waste my time. That clear?”

  “Perfectly.” His face got redder and his nostrils pinched in a way that meant only one thing. Trouble.

  “I’m glad somebody understands English. People you meet nowadays seem to need a building falling on them.” I threw a look at Miss Wexler.

  I hadn’t really laid it on too thick. But it was obviously just the right kind of spadework piled just enough in the right place. Anton went into action like a supercharged mechanical toy.

  He came at me feet first. I mean that literally. Maybe you’ve never heard of la savate but Anton had because he was a Frenchman. And a dandy. And any French dandy worth his salt prefers la savate to plain old fists-and-knuckles.

  You play it with the feet. It’s quite a game. Just loaded with good clean fun. All you do is dance around like Golden Glovers and try to kick each other’s heads off.

  Don’t ask me why but I was ready for him. Possibly because I was at the door, one hand on the knob, all set to usher them out in style. Maybe because some inner seventh or eighth sense had him spotted for something besides the stand-up-and-fight type.

  His booted heel flashed past my jaw as I fell away, pushing the door back against the wall where it crashed like a bass drum. I swerved like a taxi taking a corner on two wheels to meet his follow-up charge.

  An expert at la savate doesn’t lose his balance and wind up on his back just because he misses. He comes back at you primed. With the other foot. You really keep your balance in that league.

  Anton’s mug was ugly as he closed in. I did a little fancy two-step to keep out of his reach.

  Miss Wexler screamed charmingly and shrank into her fur stole as Anton’s foot swiftly shot toward the base of my chin.

  I caught his flying kick with both hands, twisted sharp at the ankle with good old American sidewalk emphasis, and dumped him right on his uniformed rear. He was a panic going down with a hurt look on his suave kisser.

  There were two sounds almost immediately.

  The air rushing out of Anton in an injured whelp. And the unmistakable, no-doubt-about-it slam and bang of a .45 automatic at close range. Once, twice, three times.

  Orange spurted from the hall corridor through the open door. Anton, who was just beginning to rise, sat down again. It was more as if he’d been kicked by a horse. His head jerked like a puppet on a fast string and his whole body shuddered as if a strong wind was blowing. Then the wind stopped and so did Anton.

  I was across from him on the other side of the office with the gaping doorway between us. There was nothing I could do. My gun was in the desk drawer. The quick glance I flung that way was pure instinct. And one of the reasons I have stayed alive this long is the nice habit of not sticking my head out when a .45 is on the loose.

  Miss Wexler was buried somewhere behind the desk whimpering like a puppy. But I wasn’t playing hero in front of an open doorway with a loaded .45 cutting up like the Fourth of July.

  I held my breath, waited, knowing what was coming. Knowing that all I could do was just that: wait.

  Not until the sound of someone running down the hall came to my ears did I move. Then I
went through the motions, by the book, knowing I’d be about five minutes too late.

  I whipped to the desk, dug out my equalizer, and raced to the hallway. The corridor was as deserted as a factory on Labor Day.

  I checked the indicator on the one elevator. The arrow was firmly anchored on Roman numeral I. My office was three flights up. That let that out. I sped to the stairway and cocked an ear. Not a sound of footsteps going up or down.

  That did it. Disgustedly, I holstered my .45 and went back to my office. Eyewitnesses were out too. It was too early yet for most of the offices in the building. I was around only because I usually sleep in mine.

  A frightened face peered out guardedly from the rug outfit halfway down the hall. Mr. Nakoomian, the rug dealer, with his magnifying-glass-style specs was too scared and too half-blind to have seen anything of value. But I took a stab at it.

  All I got for my efforts was his door slammed in my face and hysterical cries of “Murderer! Go ’way—I call police!” That and an assortment of noises that suggested that Mr. Nakoomian was barricading his door with every rolled length of rug in his office.

  Miss Wexler was a sobbing wreck back in the auditorium. Her curved figure was limp in the desk chair and she wouldn’t pry her painted paws from her eyes to even look at Anton. That somehow disgusted me too. If this were your screen test at Warner Brothers, sister, I told myself, you’d be in like Flynn.

  What was left of Anton wouldn’t interest anybody but his mother or maybe a ghoulish morgue attendant. Or maybe a guy like me. But I had to. He was my baby now.

  I turned him over and got a mild jolt.

  Only one of the three slugs had caught him. But that one had been enough. The front of his tunic had changed color rapidly. Deep brown to deeper red. A .45-caliber bullet can make a red ruin of material when there’s soft human flesh underneath it. Funny thing though. He didn’t look like a rat any more. He looked just like what a .45 caught in the soft part of the stomach can make you look like.