The Horrible Man Read online

  "Noon, here. Yes, Chief?"

  "Ed," the President said. "Something's come up that requires immediate attention."

  We never wasted too much time with amenities and formalities like Hello and How are you? and What's new? He was too busy a man for that and we both understood that the race was to the swift.

  "Go ahead. I'm listening."

  "Tommy Spanner," the President of the United States said. "Do you know the name?"

  The fly had left the office, seeking the loftier precincts of the fine air beyond the office window, but now he was beating his wings in my skull. Bzzz. Bzzz. Bzzz.

  "Yes," I said. "I know the name. He was killed last night and the police have his murderer today. What—"

  "Ed," the Chief said very slowly and very carefully. "Listen to what I have to tell you, there must be no mistake. Understand me, Ed. This can't be handled by the usual government agencies. And it must be done today." He took a deep breath. He must have. There was a long pause. "I don't know how you'll do it but I want you to keep tabs on Mr. Spanner's corpse until it is buried. Until you can all but say you have seen him interred, wherever that may be. Clear? The Government must make certain Thomas Spanner is safely in the ground. Or vault. Or whatever. I can't tell you more until that is done."

  His familiar voice came loud and clear over the wire but never had I heard him tell me anything so outlandish and screwy. Tommy Spanner? Washington, D.C.?

  "He wasn't a religious man," I heard myself say. "He might be cremated."

  "So much the better. Too much to hope for though. In any case, I want to know you'll be on the job doing what I have asked."

  "I'm your man. You know that."

  "Good. Luck, Ed. And call when you learn something."

  He hung up in the White House and I hung up in the mouse auditorium, maybe three hundred miles away. But there was about a million miles of maze between us at that precise moment.

  The President of the United States was asking me to bodyguard the corpse of a millionaire playboy who had been chopped up by a sick girl-friend. I was stumped. Saddled with a mystery that defied unravelling.

  Would you believe flabbergasted?

  TWO

  THE SPANNER WRENCH

  □ An unusual client came into the office just before my name hit the clock I was on my fifth paper aeroplane, manufactured from the Tuesday pages of the New York Times. It was all I'd been doing since the Man in the White House hung up. There were a lot of things I could have done. Called Mike Monks, phoned the newspaper offices for some morgue file stuff on Tommy Spanner to see what he'd been up to all year before the Ralston dame used him for shish kebab. I was in a punko mood. But Melissa Mercer had come back brightly from the bank, as if she indeed had found a friend at Chase Manhattan, and then there was the new client.

  He was something new in clients.

  The client's chair, a deep, leather-covered special from Ludwig Bauman's, dwarfed him. Which wasn't hard to do because he was a dwarf. He looked lonely and childish sitting in the chair, his short legs poking out at me, his hands folded in his lap. He was dressed smartly, a pint-sized Menjou in striped trousers, grey coat, pink cravat, with stickpin to match. A white carnation looked like a toy balloon in his left lapel. For a face, he had gone to another extreme. He was incomparably handsome. Eyes, nose, mouth, ears, chin and a shock of wavy black hair like a Broadway juvenile, all belonged in a collar ad. He was twenty-five years old and he said he was an actor, specialising in Off-Broadway plays where the Theatre of the Absurd had found a lot of work for him. His name was Garcia Lopez but he didn't look Spanish.

  He looked as sad as a monkey locked in a cage. His wife of three months was shortchanging him in the bedroom department. She was taking French lessons from one Paul Arnet and Garcia Lopez wanted proof that she had wandered beyond the point of vocal instruction.

  "You don't seem surprised, Mr. Noon," Garcia Lopez said. His voice was a fooler too. Out-sized and deeply masculine.

  "Should I be?"

  He shrugged, lost in the chair. "I'm a dwarf. I married an Amazon. Mady is six feet two. She's not a bad woman really. I shouldn't have tried to buck Mother Nature."

  "You'll have to explain that, Mr. Lopez. I'm mixed up with government headaches this morning."

  "Taxes." He smiled, deducing I had Internal Revenue problems because April the fifteenth was bearing down on everybody. I let it ride. He wouldn't have believed me about Tommy Spanner and Mr. President anyway.

  "By the way, who recommended me to you?"

  "Sid Miller. The lawyer. He said you were a good man. I liked the way he said it. He wasn't being sarcastic the way people usually are when they say that about a man."

  "Sid's a good lawyer. Now what about bucking Mother Nature?"

  He smiled, almost shyly. But there was more of defeat in the expression.

  "I wasn't big enough," he admitted simply. "Oh, I'm normal enough. It's only my legs that are short. But Mady is so big. So much of a woman. I couldn't satisfy her obviously. I can't blame her about the Frenchman. Now, I only want to get a divorce."

  "Won't she give you one?"

  "No. You see—for all of her faults—she really needs me. I bring out the mother in her. Big women need that too. This—other thing—is but the temporary escapes into lust. Still—I'm a proud person, Mr. Noon. I find I can't live a lie. Will you help me? I am able to pay."

  "Do you have a picture of Mrs. Lopez?"

  He did. His wallet was one of those many-windowed things. He passed it across the desk. Besides the necessary licences and forms a guy has to carry, there was a veritable passing parade of Mady Lopez. She was more freak than he would ever be. The epitome of the stripper, exotic showgirl type. They only come two ways when they're too big for mortal man. Heart-shaped little girl faces atop mountainous rolls and hills of flesh. That or harsh, stony sullen loveliness that is somehow as ugly as sin. I restrained a shake of my head. Garcia Lopez didn't need my sympathy. He needed my help. Mady would bury him long before he ever buried her.

  "Divorce cases are no longer in my line, Mr. Lopez." I passed the leather wallet back across the desk. It was like handing a small boy a lollipop. "I don't trail errant people anymore. Or use a Brownie reflex. I got a thing about jumping into the middle of private wars. I think the laws of this state and the whole country for that matter in regard to marriages not made in heaven are about three steps behind the Stone Age. Sorry."

  Garcia Lopez's fine face stiffened.

  "Please. It's difficult for me to get around. I'm so conspicuous. I have no friends."

  "Why bother with this? You'll only hurt yourself more? You said you're proud. I believe you. I know what even coming here cost you. It can't be easy blowing the whistle on the woman you love."

  His eyes shone as if I had complimented him.

  "You see that, do you? That I love her—"

  "Yes, I see it. What made you decide that you had to do something about it today?"

  He held up his hands. They were large, smooth and manicured.

  "She has an appointment with Paul Arnet at three o'clock this afternoon. Worse than that, she was distraught all last night and this morning. The papers, you see. All about Tommy Spanner. How he died. All his women. His life. The brutalness of his death."

  Tommy Spanner. Tilt!

  "Why should she be so upset about Spanner? He led the life of a rooster and was killed on the rise."

  "Spanner was the first man she betrayed me with. Only a month ago. That was the beginning of it. Only lasted a week-end. He took her skiing in Lake Placid. I forgave her that time. He got her drunk after a party in his home and she woke up in his car on the way to the Adirondacks—she said. I couldn't blame Spanner. What could I do to him anyway? He was so rich and powerful Gangsters were his friends. I let well enough alone. Mady did come back to me, asking my forgiveness."

  "But she isn't asking for it this time?" I was thinking about other things.

  "No. And that's what I'm afr
aid of. It can become a habit. A habit I can't live with." His eyes begged me again. "Please, Mr. Noon."

  I studied his face, nodding. "Okay. Give me Arnet's address and phone number. Leave your card with my secretary. And don't come back here until I call you. Understood?"

  He looked like he was bouncing happily in the leather chair.

  "I can't thank you enough—"

  "Don't thank me. I'm robbing you of one hundred bucks for one day's work. Maybe two days. If it runs over that time, I may ask you for more."

  "Any amount, any time. If only you help me—"

  I smiled. "You're lucky the police already have Tommy Spanner's killer. And a confession that is standing up."

  He frowned at that. I finished the thought.

  "You would have had a Grade A motive for killing him, Mr. Lopez."

  "Oh. Yes. I suppose you're right."

  "Not always. Now if you'll depart I'll get to work on this."

  He nodded eagerly, scrambling out of the big chair like that same little boy. Standing up, he was just about head and shoulders above the desk. We shook hands. He had, as I expected, the grip of a stevedore. Probably could rip telephone books in half and bend silver dollars into halves.

  He had come in wearing a jaunty green velour felt hat with a Tyrolean feather in the band. On him it looked exactly right. He smiled a million dollar smile. Some of the sadness had left his eyes and the carriage of his shoulders.

  "You are a good man, Mr. Noon."

  "Sure I am," I agreed. "But maybe not half the man you are. So long, Mr. Lopez. If I have any messages for Garcia, you'll be the first to know."

  That really made him smile. He was still wearing the smile as he exited springily from the office. But not before he had scribbled some vital data down on the memo pad close to the phone on the desk.

  The door slammed and I looked at what he had written.

  PAUL ARNET

  415 Central Park West

  Underhill 6-3476

  Odd. It was about ten doors down from where I lived. That made the world seem even smaller. Spanner had been chopped just across Central Park on Fifth Avenue. A dwarf's wife had played footsy with him. The President of the country was interested in his mortal remains. And a dame named Christina Ralston, admitted nymphomaniac, was warming her rusty dusty in one of Mike Monks' nice cells waiting for lawyers and a jury to find some mitigation for her senseless act of murder.

  I lit a Camel and reclined in my contour chair, thinking things over. I was still getting nowhere at home plate, just using resin dust on my hands, when there was a tap on the office door. I fumbled a grunt of acknowledgement and Melissa Mercer ambled in.

  Her amble was born to the beat of a jungle drum, synchronised with an incredible amount of tan beauty and style. Her face was sort of a Jean Simmons in sepia.

  "He left a cheque for a hundred dollars. That the price?"

  "Uh huh."

  "Being coloured's a drag but it can't be fun for him."

  "Not lately. His big normal wife is stepping out on him with a French language character. Name of Arnet."

  Melissa's face crumpled.

  "Ugh. I thought you didn't take those kind of cases any more. You hate messed-up marriages."

  "This is different. Joker in the deck I can't tell you about."

  She smiled, flinging a glance at the red-white-and-blue Ameche. "That kind of joker again? Hush hush and Melissa mustn't be told because Melissa might get hurt?"

  I swivelled in the chair and stared up at her. She is one of the few people on the earth I really love and admire.

  "Now what crystal ball did that come out of?"

  She shrugged. "I'm fey, ofey. You'd better believe it. Now are you going out for lunch or what?"

  "No. Send down for some coffee and a salami on wheat. I'll be heading out at about two o'clock. I'll be scouting this Arnet guy. Mrs. Lopez is taking a French lesson today."

  "Oh."

  "What's the oh, for?"

  "You made that sound dirty, Ed?"

  "It is, Mel. It is."

  She forgot my inflection and adjusted a coral earring that had obviously loosened. "Anything special for me to do while you're out? There usually is after a client walks out of that door."

  "Again, you're a mind reader. I've got a lot of phone calls I want you to make. And some notes. Leave them on the desk for me. Get out your pencil and pad. This ought to keep you out of mischief until closing time."

  She sat down in the client's chair, recently occupied by Garcia Lopez and crossed her legs. She was picture beautiful, I liked looking at her but I couldn't pause in the day's occupation. Maybe the world had BB, but I had MM.

  I told her to call Monks and find out who was claiming Mr. Tommy Spanner's corpse from the Police Morgue when they were through with it. I asked her to call the Daily News and ask for Cal Wylie of the City Desk. I wanted a complete run down on Tommy Spanner's life as covered by the papers and wire services since 1960 at least. Cal owed me a couple of favours and this would give him a good chance to pay off. Lastly, I wanted her to call Mr. Stallings Spanner at the Spanner mansion in Hempstead, where a generation of Spanners had hung their polo sticks for as long as I could remember. She was to pretend to be a fiancee of Tommy's, bereft over her loss, and wanting to know what funeral arrangements had been made, if any.

  Melissa took it all down, without comment. I have asked her to do too many strange things in the past for her to back out now. I couldn't think of anything else until the coffee and sandwich came up from the Coffee Shop on West 46th Street.

  "One thing more. Try to get your hands on a copy of 'The American Way Of Death'. The Jessica Mitford book. It may come in handy. I understand it's all about procedure and practice when it comes to our dear departed."

  "Wow, you're in a cheery mood for Tuesday. Morgues, dead files and snooping around a graveyard. I feel like a ghoul."

  "You're beautiful and do what I tell you."

  "I hear you talking, Boss Man."

  I had nothing to do after that but sip the coffee, eat the sandwich and wait until it was time to join the French lesson shared by Paul Arnet and Mady Lopez.

  Melissa was right. It did sound dirty. But then the whole Tommy Spanner thing had begun on a note of free-wheeling, obscene sex and was continuing along on the same sensual orbit.

  But the sixty-four thousand dollar question was still staring me in the face.

  What did Tommy Spanner's bizarre finish have to do with the President of these United States?

  THREE

  FRENCH WITHOUT EARS

  □ 415 Central Park West was an apartment house building. It towered seventeen floors into the low-lying smog that lay over Manhattan. A penthouse topped the last floor. There was a small service elevator to the right of the lobby with a doctor's office just opposite. The doctor's office was partly ajar. A brown panelled door showed a slit of wall, some charts and a pair of crossed legs less shapely than Melissa Mercer's had been. I didn't ogle but turned my back, waiting for the car to come down.

  The directory in the vestibule said Paul Arnet was on the seventeenth floor. The lobby was empty of life, save for the doorman on duty at the front door under an old-fashioned canopy.

  17D was my destination. It was also someone else's. Mrs. Mady Lopez.

  I hadn't walked in blind. First, I had parked the Buick around the corner on one hundredth and first street and taken my time approaching the building. Mrs. Lopez had been in plenty of time for her French lesson. A yellow taxi-cab deposited her in front of 415 at about ten minutes to three. I couldn't have missed her if I tried. She left the cab, charging into the building like a Sherman tank. Only Shermans don't have mile-long legs and tremendous hips and breasts encased in a silly short black fur jacket and calf-high boots. All I could make of the dress was that it was fire-house red, matching a doubly-ridiculous tam. Mrs. Lopez's profile was all I got a look at. It came as I had expected. Chiselled, doll-like Shirley Temple cute. It was a meaningless fa
ce to carry around on a six foot two frame. The calf-high boots made a monster of her.

  One Camel later, smoked down to the end, was when I entered the building. The doorman ignored me. I looked like I knew where I was going. Doormen can't talk to everybody they see, nor dare offend a man in a Brooks Brothers suit with a harmless smile. I got by.

  The elevator car dropped back to floor level and I got in. Her perfume lingered in the cramped, tiny car. It was coffin sized and fitted my mood.

  The perfume aroma was blatant and cloying. I hadn't been prepared for anything subtle. The car hummed upward smoothly. I watched the floor buttons peel away.

  The seventeenth floor was laughable. About four feet in width and four in depth. A pebbled mirror rode high above an ornamental marble table that had some sick-looking artificial fruit in a wicker basket shaped like a cornucopia. 17D was the apartment on the right. 17E was on the left.

  I stepped to the door, taking a skeleton key from my coat pocket. From the inside of my belted waist, I unhooked the compact Instamatic camera. The cube flashbulbs which could shoot a set of four pictures without bothering to make adjustments was all set. Four pics would satisfy Mr. Garcia Lopez, I thought. Four pics would destroy a character like Mrs. Garcia Lopez. If the little man was right.

  It was second story work, the sort of thing I hadn't done in years. I tried not to think about it. Tommy Spanner and the President and the mute appeal in Garcia Lopez's eyes were pushing me all the way. The lock on the door was a breeze.

  In less than fifteen seconds, I had angled the portal with real quiet speed and stepped in. A darkened foyer swallowed me whole. I smelled the perfume again. Mady Lopez was here. I followed the scent. Small apartment noises were reaching my ears. Low, unhurried voices. I saw a gleam of light at the other end of the foyer. The shades had been drawn all over the place, as high up as the apartment was. A hardly-heard radio made rhythmical, tiny sounds somewhere. I heard a laugh. A woman's giggle.

  There wasn't much doubt left in me. What's to laugh about parlez-vous Francais?

  Paul Arnet and his student weren't concerned about interruptions, obviously. I wasn't either. They didn't expect anyone to walk in on them. I didn't worry about my rear. I was safe in an afternoon love nest. Love in the afternoon.