There Is Something About a Dame Read online

  I smiled in spite of my smashed lip and the painful tug of some makeshift clothesline that pinned me to the client’s chair.

  “Your deal, Vince. I came here and kept your darling Linda company until Sir Stewart showed up. It seems Linda was waiting to hear from you. I know you heisted Memo Morgan from sick bay today. I’d like to know why but you obviously aren’t going to tell me. I’m afraid Sir Stewart was a little more impatient than I am. I get the idea he conked me and dragged your fair lady off to point out the hiding place to him. He’s hot for Shakespeare or haven’t you heard?”

  The information had a surprising effect on Devlin. He flew off the desk corner and walked around to his chair, cursing and kicking things all the way. He seemed to forget about me in his wrath. For a second, I had the notion he didn’t remember I was in the room. I tried my bonds experimentally. Inwardly, I groaned. I was tied up better than Thanksgiving turkey. Talk was all the weapon I had left. He hadn’t gagged me.

  I started to whistle. I whistled Taps. It wasn’t much of a noise but it served my purpose. Devlin stopped cursing, remembered me, and surprise twisted his cruel face out of shape.

  “What the hell is that for?” he said quietly. He could have been the Voice in the alley with the garbage pail cover except for the grotesque adolescence of his pipsqueak throat.

  “I’d like to know what your next move is,” I said. “Do you leave me here or do I get the full treatment? And please tell me just what this is all about. Do you believe in Shakespeare? Is there a missing manuscript? And above all, I would like to know why Savannah Gage hired you.”

  V. Devlin, Private Investigations, looked at me. His eyes were colder than a river in winter. He looked at me long and hard. I tried to read his face but couldn’t. He must have been a great poker player. I’d never know what he was holding. Suddenly, without a murmur, he came back around the desk and walked toward my chair. He stopped just short of me. I braced myself. Because he was a hatchet-man, the perfect executioner, and if it was coming now, I didn’t have a prayer. A lump welled up in my throat that wouldn’t go away with swallowing. I could feel my muscles start to panic, try to crawl all over my body, but I made them stop.

  “You’re sweating,” he said, without expression.

  “Wouldn’t you if you were me?” It was all I had left.

  For some crazy reason, he liked that. For an even crazier one, he reached around my chair, past my arms and fumbled with the cords behind me. I could smell the dirty material of his trenchcoat. Then he straightened, stepped back, and produced a .45 from his shoulder holster.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Climb out of there. We’re going out together. You and me. I’m going to let you in on the biggest deal of your life. For two reasons. I can’t afford a stiff in this thing. And I think I need your help. But you’d better remember something, Noon. This rod is a hair-trigger job. Not practical maybe but you get the idea. You’d never be fast enough to stop her from going off no matter how hard you try. Or what you try. Get the picture?”

  I was too relieved to do anything but nod and scramble out of my bonds. There’s something about being tied up that paralyzes your sense of freedom. It felt good to have the blood flow back into my arms again. I got up slowly as he edged a few feet back from me. He was so right. I wouldn’t blink my eyes without telling him if he had a .45 on hair trigger. He wasn’t the bluffing kind because he’d never had time for it.

  “It’s your show,” I suggested.

  “You bet it is,” he agreed, his full lip showing his pleasure at such an arrangement. “We’re walking out to my car in front. A green Chevy coupe. Just act natural. I’m taking you for a ride. It’s your lucky day, Noon. This isn’t the usual kind of ride. On the way out, I’ll give you some facts. By the time the ride is ended, you either come in on this with me or you’re out in the cold somewhere. Where you’ll stay a long, long time. It’s as simple as that. You’re getting a chance to cut in on a fortune. I need some brains and muscle now. Linda can’t help me in either department. You can. Now start walking out ahead of me. Slow and easy.”

  He poked the .45 at the door while I retrieved my crushed fedora from the floor. The porkpie was squashed from Sir Stewart’s Webley treatment but still serviceable. I placed it on my head gingerly. I opened the office door carefully and stepped through. Devlin clicked the lights off behind him and closed the door on a safety lock. The hallway was lit up for evening.

  “Mind if I ask a question before we go joyriding, Devlin?”

  His voice was a whisper behind my ear. “Shoot.”

  “Is Memo Morgan still alive?”

  His answer seemed to take years before we hit the stone steps that led down onto the street. Night was coming on hard.

  “You don’t get the answer to that one until you say yes or no to the deal. Now shut up. There’s the car.”

  It was a green coupe, ’52 Chevrolet. But I saw another car too. The red of it jumped out at me even though it was parked five cars down the block with the lights off. Even in the dying daylight, the ’63 Dodge was as bright as a fire engine.

  As I climbed into the coupe and Devlin motioned me to drive, I knew he hadn’t seen it.

  But why would Savannah Gage be tailing him if she had hired him? He’d certainly used the Dodge for the hospital job—

  As I gunned the Chevy into life, I made a mental note to give up private detection and go to Tahiti and paint for the rest of my life. But I didn’t forget about Devlin’s hair-trigger .45. A paint brush would never replace it.

  “Hit Riverside first chance you get and head for the Bronx. I’ll stop you before we get there.”

  I pulled out from the curb and eased up to Eighth Avenue. In the rearview I could see the hood of the red Dodge working out from between two parked cars.

  I had a moment to wonder if I’d ever live to see the mouse auditorium again. Holes and all.

  Devlin growled something fierce and I got back to my driving. I tooled the Chevy up Eighth, swung west on Fifty-first Street and roared toward Riverside Drive.

  Milady wasn’t far behind.

  “Thy father thou hast much offended… ”

  TWENTY

  Devlin let me do the driving. But he wasn’t making any mistakes. Any notions I might have about playing hero were all evaporated by the hair-trigger .45 lying across his lap, pointed idly but carefully at my all too helpless middle.

  As I threaded my way through early evening traffic, I kept my eyes peeled for Savannah Gage’s Dodge. My ears were still waiting for Devlin’s proposition.

  He grunted and looked at me the way Clark Gable used to look at the opposition in all his MGM movies. Brows beetled, eyes squinting, confidence pulling at his mouth corners.

  “I’ll lay it out for you, Noon. Just once. I don’t like to repeat myself. The Gage dame came to me three weeks ago. Says she wants Memo Morgan tailed for fifty bucks a day. That’s all. No explanations, no nothing. You’ve seen my dump. I needed the dough. I took the job. Morgan was easy to tail. Wide-open. Walks around like he loves the world. I report to Gage every morning by phone. Nothing happens—Morgan don’t even blow his nose—but Gage keeps forking over fifty. For nothing, it looks like to me. Then one day, she invited me over to her dump for a chat. The fifty starts to look like small potatoes.”

  I pulled out from behind a slow-moving Cadillac and edged ahead. “Enter the missing manuscript?”

  He scowled. “I don’t know from Shakespeare. But Gage gives me a pitch about Morgan holding onto a world treasure or something. Now she wants me to frisk Morgan’s place and rough him up if I have to make him come clean. Sounded screwy but she put a ten grand price tag on delivery of either a copy of some play or Morgan’s cooperation.”

  I thought that one over.

  “She tell you about her father being an English don at Oxford? Be a feather in his professorial cap to come up with a find like that.” I sighed. “So you beat the poor slob up and shot him after you couldn’t find anything. Th
at’s a lousy way to make money, Devlin.”

  Now it was my turn to be surprised. Because Devlin grunted and practically ignored my insults.

  “You’re a jerk, Noon. Beat up who? Shot who? After I cleaned out Morgan’s flat with a fine tooth comb and came up with zero, I went looking for him. But somebody beat me to it. I only caught up with him at the hospital. By that time I was working for myself. I got the dope on Morgan from a cop pal down at Headquarters who lets me in on things for a few fish a month. But I’m coming to our deal—”

  “Hold everthing,” I said, putting my eyes back on the highway to avoid slamming a Ford. “You can’t pull the innocent act on me. Morgan put the finger on you by name while he was spilling his guts out on the nice floor of the Ritz lobby. I suppose you don’t own a machine gun either.”

  The .45 touched me gently in the ribs. Ever so gently but I got the point. I was raising my voice and calling him names and he didn’t like it.

  “I don’t know you and don’t care where you get your information, you bastard. I’m just telling you I never laid a finger on Morgan until this morning when I snatched him from that hospital. And what’s all this funny talk about machine guns? You want in on a good thing or don’t you?”

  “Skip it,” I said. “I lost my head.” It didn’t make sense. If Devlin was telling the truth, nothing made any sense. But what could he gain by lying? I didn’t know. So I got back to my driving and listening.

  “Okay,” he growled. “Shut up and listen. Like I said, I don’t know from Shakespeare. But all of a sudden the Gage dame clams up on me. Wants to drop everything and forget the whole deal. Then this Sir Stewart gazebo is right in there. Another limey. So Shakespeare was a limey. I figure there may be something in the whole pie. So today I cut myself a piece of the action. A real piece. I got the guy everybody else wants. Including whoever chopped him up. He’s worth something. I got to find out what that something is.”

  “Does Linda Gates know where he is?”

  His chuckle was my answer. “Dumb broad. I showed her a phony blind today. I figured she might crack under pressure. She and the limey are off on a wild goose chase.”

  “Where have you got him, Devlin?”

  “Just keep driving. We haven’t finished our deal yet.”

  Up ahead, the beautiful span of the George Washington Bridge loomed on the horizon. The Bronx wasn’t far behind. Traffic wasn’t heavy, either. Just us, a Jersey sedan and the red Dodge about fifty yards back.

  I had another question. “How come you used Gage’s Dodge for the snatch?”

  He chuckled again. “She let me have the keys in case I needed it. Worked out fine. Left the car in front of her place after I transferred Morgan. The cops won’t bother this Chevy at all. I’m clean.”

  “Smart, too,” I said.

  Devlin’s pipsqueak got friendly.

  “You’re smart, Noon. The limey actor is your client. He must have let you in on what this is all about. I figure maybe you know some Shakespeare too. Dig me? I got Morgan. You got some information we can both use. Unless this Mr. X steps forward and makes a claim and backs it up with cash. Get it? Throw in with me and I’ll split with you right down the middle. Forget about Linda. I’ll dump her. No fuss. Just me and you and the big hit. I’m tired of divorce and wearing out my pants sitting in parked cars getting dope on hardup married jerks. What do you say?”

  I kept my eyes straight ahead.

  “You’re telling me Memo Morgan is still alive?”

  There was a slight pause.

  “You’ll be holding his hand in less than ten minutes.”

  “Can he talk?”

  Devlin chuckled again.

  “He can’t exactly recite speeches but he’s sitting up and taking notice. Pretty tough bastard considering what he’s been through.”

  My hands were tied. I had to think. My stomach was hanging on the hair-trigger of a .45. And if Devlin hadn’t shot Morgan, hadn’t machine-gunned my office or beat me over the head with a garbage pail cover, then who the hell had? His pipsqueak voice had bothered me because it certainly wasn’t the Boot Hill sound of the Voice, but a clever imitation wasn’t out of his reach. It was a puzzler, all right. Who was the Mystery Man and why? But Morgan had said “Devlin—that bastard Devlin…” It was too much to handle, especially when you’re clipping along the West Side Highway at sixty per at gunpoint with a red Dodge trailing you.

  “Well?” His tone was tight, flat and unmistakable.

  I nodded. “Deal. All the way. If you’re not really responsible for his condition, I owe you an apology. Anyhow, I never argue with a .45. Even on my best days.”

  “That’s a smart guy. Okay,” he said. “Just remember I still got the gun and we will get along fine.” He checked the highway briefly. “Another mile or so. Do you know the Bronx? Featherbed Lane? We want Jesup Avenue. A basement apartment. Nice residential destrict. Miles away from the cops and peaceful as hell. Kids with bicycles all over the place.”

  “That’s where Morgan is?”

  “That’s where Morgan is.”

  I knew the Bronx. I knew Featherbed Lane. I also knew that I was dying to see Memo Morgan before he died on all of us and left behind the mystery of my lifetime.

  I hit the accelerator hard, turned off the highway and zipped through the last stretch of Manhattan that bridges the Hudson River before it spreads out into the West Bronx, land of my misspent youth.

  “Dead for a ducket. Dead!”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Devlin was right.

  Jesup Avenue was quieter than a churchyard at midnight. Tall trees lined the avenue overlooked by tall apartment houses. It was too dark to see any bicycles but somewhere off in the darkness I could hear children’s voices at play. Beyond that, a cheery atmosphere of suburbia, far from the metropolitan clamor, prevailed. I slid the Chevy easily up the long street until Devlin motioned for me to turn into a driveway on the left. We halted on asphalt. In the gloom I could see a metal picket fence, rows of bushes and a basement apartment with three windows that slanted down from the sidewalk. We got out and Devlin poked me ahead of him silently. We left the asphalt and turned into the slanting walk that led about fifty feet down to a glass-paneled door of the basement apartment. A high stoop swung to the left, leading upstairs to a private home up above. The people upstairs were in. I saw lights and heard dinner dishes clattering, smelled cooking.

  Devlin grunted, “In here. There’s a switch by the front door.”

  I forgot about Savannah Gage and what she might do. I suddenly realized that Memo Morgan was finally within reach. The man who had initiated this whole fantastic merry-go-round. I found the switch, flicked it on. We were in a box-shaped hallway, about four feet square, before a door that needed painting badly. There was no number or letter on the door. “Go ahead,” Devlin said. “It’s open.”

  It was. The door gave way beneath my hand. A lone bulb dangling from the ceiling illuminated weakly the poor excuse for a kitchen. There was a stove of Civil War vintage, a ramshackle table and mismated chairs. The sink was a travesty in cracked porcelain. I heard the drip-drip-drip of a defective faucet. The whole place had an untidy, unsanitary, unlived in aroma. Opened cans littered the table.

  “Never mind the kitchen.” Devlin was closing the door behind us. “There’s a bedroom inside where you’ll find our golden goose. I hope he’s ready to hatch.”

  I went through the kitchen into an entrance that was missing a door. The bedroom was another travesty. No wallpaper, no furniture except a battered couch with a grotesquely large lamp that cast a pale yellow glow over what the couch held. Devlin had left two lights burning on his last visit. Out of kindness or oversight, I couldn’t guess. Either way it couldn’t have mattered to the dazed, drugged bundle of battered life on the couch. Memo Morgan’s bandage-swathed face and arms gleamed white and unreal against the coarse Army blankets that covered his lumpy body. I moved slowly to his side, feeling some of the awe that unbelievers must hav
e felt in the presence of a new God. Behind me, Devlin laughed. A sneering laugh.

  “What are you walking on tiptoe for? He won’t bite you. He ain’t been saying much of anything, either.”

  I ignored the sting in his words and bent over Memo Morgan. His one unbandaged hand lay limp over the edge of the blanket. I tried to find his pulse. It was fainter than a watch tick. He groaned low and stirred uncomfortably.

  “What do you think, Noon?”

  I couldn’t take my eyes off the broken nose and the battered mouth. Memo’s eyelids fluttered, half-open, tried to find my face.

  “Not too good. He’s weaker than a sick kitten—”

  Maybe it was my voice. Maybe it was the long stillness suddenly being broken for a man who’s been in darkness for longer than twenty-four hours. But Memo Morgan suddenly opened his eyes and looked at me. Right at me. I caught my breath because sanity was in those eyes. Sanity and recognition. Even Devlin, right behind me, caught the difference. He gasped audibly.

  “Sonofabitch—” he cursed. “I couldn’t get a peep out of him for hours—”

  “Shut up,” I said quietly. “Memo, do you know who I am?”

  The light from the lamp was eerie. Memo Morgan’s head revolved slowly. From me to Devlin and then back to me again. His cracked lips parted, tried to form words. It was the lobby of the Ritz all over again. Only this time he wasn’t incoherent or bubbling insanely. Also, he seemed to be able to look at Devlin without flinching.

  “Noon—” Memo’s voice was still pitiful, though. “I didn’t mean anything—just a chance to make real money—it wouldn’t have hurt anybody at all—what good is having a great memory if you can’t make money with it?—big money—”