There Is Something About a Dame Read online

  The staggering man turned a bloody but grateful face up at me before he sagged in my arms. Somebody had worked him over real good. And he was soaked with blood from the waistline down as if he’d been standing in a bucket of red paint big enough to hold him.

  But the thing that filled my mind as my fingers explored for the wound was that I knew him.

  The beaten, wounded man was no stranger. He was Memo Morgan.

  Broadway’s Mr. Memory.

  “Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell

  That summons thee to Heaven, or to Hell.”

  THREE

  There wasn’t much time for thinking about the man who’d once won better than two hundred thousand dollars on television because he had a photographic memory. Wasn’t much time to ponder his outlandish clothes of striped jacket and cocoa-colored trousers. There wasn’t even time to think about what had happened to him.

  I found the gaping hole below Memo Morgan’s belt buckle. Just to the right of his groin. I remember yelling something about getting an ambulance to nobody in particular and ramming my breast pocket handkerchief into the big hole and damming up the flow of scarlet.

  He was in terrible shape. As if the bullet hole hadn’t been enough—he’d been badly beaten also. So badly beaten that he was about twenty minutes away from dying if we didn’t get him to a hospital. I had to stop him from bleeding to death.

  I mopped the blood away from his face with my free hand. His face was a mess. His nose looked broken, both eyes were swelling rapidly and his lips were split. His mouth hung slack and out of control, revealing two cracked teeth on the top rack. He kept trying to mumble something as I wiped his damaged profile. His face didn’t worry me, though. The hand that I had plugged into his abdomen was soaking with his life’s fluid.

  “Devilin—” Jumbled words slopped past his lips with bubbling sounds. “Bastard—devilin me—”

  A fancy way to put it when you get right down to it.

  “Easy, Memo,” I said. “It’s me. Ed Noon.” I wanted him to have something to latch onto before he slipped off into nowhere.

  Something went on in his eyes. They lost their glaze and saw me for the space of a second’s sanity. Memo Morgan’s big hands came up and took a death grip on my lapels.

  “Noon?—detective—carries a .45—tries not to use it—devilin—you saw him—?”

  “Don’t talk. Later. We’ll get you out of this.”

  “Bastard—” A snarl forced itself through Memo Morgan’s ruined mouth. “Killed me—Noon—you gotta—”

  His eyeballs suddenly rolled and the show was over for him. I caught his head before it bounced off the marble floor of the Ritz lobby. I checked his pulse. Faint but still there. A kind unconsciousness had taken charge.

  Miner’s excited voice shrilled in my ear.

  A small mob had gathered around me. Frightened usherettes, bewildered porters and a worried-looking little man who was tamping a cold pipe because he didn’t know what else to do. Sol Miner was staring down at the battered Memo Morgan with a lawyer’s shock and appreciation written all over his legal brow. Bill, the quiet counterman with the big shoulders, had both hands poked into his uniform pockets, still playing it cool.

  “Wino?” he suggested.

  “Sure,” I said. “That’s his bleeding ulcers. Be yourself. Aside from being worked over by an expert, he’s been shot through the stomach.” I flung a glance at Miner. “Where’s that ambulance?”

  Miner nervously thumbed his spectacles onto the bridge of his nose.

  “The doorman went for one. Ed, we gotta get this man out of here. He’ll scare all the customers away from the box office. They came to see a musical. What’s this—a gangster movie—?”

  “To hell with this Chinese turkey,” I said. “The guy’s dying, you understand that—?” My nerves were getting frayed thanks to the warm, wet feel of the hand pressed to Memo Morgan’s stomach.

  The pipe-tamping man cleared his throat. “Who are all these people, Miner? This is no way to operate a theatre—”

  Miner was too upset to answer him. His eyes were popping in my direction.

  “I don’t want the man to die. What have I got against the man? Who is he and how did he get here? How could he get shot? I didn’t hear any gun go off.”

  “Shut up for Christ’s sake, Sol. Let me think.”

  Bill, the counterman, nodded. “Crazy.”

  The next few minutes screamed by in such a rush of activity that it’s hard to place everything. The mob in the lobby, headed by the pipe-tamping man, began to jabber like monkeys over Memo Morgan’s sprawled body. Then a siren keened a high C of trouble that didn’t stop until a jarring squeal of brakes and tires came to a halt outside. Hurrying footfalls clacked in the outer lobby. I got a flash of white-jacketed internes, a dangling stethoscope and the time-worn black bag. Faces of curious customers strained for a look from the lobby before the theatre doors swung shut on them. A hurried conference raced between the two internes. One of them wordlessly took over for my finger-in-the-dike. I balled up the red handkerchief and dumped it into a tall metal container by the candy counter. The efficient grimness of the medical duo mounted as they eased Memo Morgan onto a white stretcher. They hurried out, all Kildare and no nonsense. I forgot about Miner and the gaping show-going public that surged in the lobby. I ignored the mass of curious humanity that throttled the sidewalk in front of the Ritz. Ambulances have a way of stealing the show. All they have to do is put in an appearance.

  It had stopped raining, too.

  I got to the back of the ambulance just as a policeman ran up to hop in with the internes and the stretcher. The bluecoat flung up a big arm.

  “Hold on, fellow,” he growled. “This any business of yours?”

  “It’s my brother,” I lied. “I want to see what happens to my brother.”

  His voice softened. “Okay. You can help me with my report. It’s not far. Roosevelt Hospital. Just twelve blocks. Lucky for your brother.”

  The door closed behind us, blotting out the street. I kept my eyes on Memo Morgan’s pain-twisted face. The interne working silently over him was setting up a plasma bottle and readying another injection. I could hear Memo Morgan’s rasping, unnatural breathing. He was about three puffs away from a death rattle.

  Twelve short blocks to Roosevelt like the cop had said. It wasn’t far. But I had time to ask myself a million questions before the cop could ask me even one. Who would want to beat and shoot a man with a million dollar memory? And why?

  It never rains trouble but it pours.

  The ambulance was roaring up Eighth Avenue, clearing a path with the screaming siren, when one of the front tires blew with a sound that could only be compared to the cry of a dying man. There was a sharp, heart-stopping lurch as the ambulance ploughed wildly into the wide-open face of the squared area beneath the massive marquee of Madison Square Garden.

  “Beware the ides of March.”

  FOUR

  I hadn’t been to Madison Square Garden since my last basketball game but this was no way to resume old ties. Reflexively, I grabbed the passenger strap as the ambulance jockey fought the wheel for control of his skidding vehicle. For a tension-packed second his tires screamed in protest as he pumped the brake. I had all I could do to keep hanging on. The interne was two steps ahead of me. He shielded Memo Morgan’s defenseless body with his own as he hung onto the bars that paralleled the sick cot. It was a bad minute for all hands. I didn’t know what the beat cop was doing. But the driver knew his stuff.

  Cutting his wheels and braking like a maniac, he brought the ambulance to a lurching, sickening stop before we could kiss the windows of the clothing store that flanked the entranceway on the left of the Garden. We rolled around like runaway dice before we halted, half on the sidewalk, half off. The frightened cop turned a whitened face to stare at me.

  “Jeez—that was a close one,” he offered.

  I wasn’t accepting. “We’d better look at that tire.
That was no blowout from where I sat.” I tapped the interne. “What about him?” Memo Morgan was groaning awake from all the excitement.

  The interne shrugged. “He’s not bleeding anymore but we better make Emergency pretty soon. He’s lost plenty of blood as it is.”

  The cop wasn’t interested in my theories about automobile tires and blowouts.

  “Stay put. I’ll commandeer a cab.”

  While he was busy commandeering, I hopped out of the rear and walked around to the nose of the ambulance where I found the confused driver. He was alternately shaking his head and cursing as he studied the left front. The tire looked silly. It was curled up like a soft cruller around the rim of the wheel. A small mob of standees had already built up, offering opinions and making bum jokes about ambulance accidents. Lucky the Garden had been closed. The circus was due in town and the joint was being readied for the lions and tigers and clowns. An out-of-control ambulance would have been messy with the usual throng of patrons that flocked into the big amphitheatre. I smiled at the driver to make him feel better and crouched close to the tire for a fast look-see. I found what I wanted and straightened.

  No nails, no glass, no pointed obstacles on Eighth Avenue had caused this blowout. I know the hole a bullet will make in everything from human flesh to windows to walls to packing cases. And—car tires.

  The driver didn’t, though. He took the cigarette I gave him and let me light it for him.

  “Damnedest thing,” he growled. “Those babies are brand new. They just outfitted this bus for me two weeks ago because I was hollering my head off about the old tires. Must be a factory goof.”

  “Forget it,” I said. “You kept your head and brought us in without a scratch. Nice going.”

  The compliment cheered him a little but he kept wagging his head. Finally he sighed and went around to the back to check with his buddy about moving Memo Morgan. Which was exactly what I’d been waiting for him to do. I had the crowd to cover my next move.

  I knelt down by the wheel again, turned my back on all the noise and commotion, and fished out my penknife. It took a good half-minute’s worth of gouging and probing but I found the slug. It was a solid hunk of golden brown lead, hardly flattened at all. Forty-five calibre. It felt hot in my hand as I dropped it in my right coat pocket. Just in time, too.

  The cop was coming back with a yellow-and-red taxi, bawling at the crowd to move back. Amidst all the uproar he made a face at me. He wasn’t too sure he believed my story about Memo Morgan being a relative. I guess I wasn’t acting concerned or very brotherly. I was starting to put on the act by moving forward as the internes gently raised Memo’s cot into the cab. I started too late. The crowd was hemming in behind me, ringing me, swallowing me whole as they pushed forward to satisfy the rubber in their collective necks. I tried to ease out from the hub of the mob. Somebody else in that crowd had other ideas. Ideas that didn’t jibe with mine.

  Something hard and familiar touched me from behind, making me aware of just exactly where the small of my back is located.

  “Don’t turn around, Buster,” a low, icy voice said an inch from my ear. “Don’t even change expression. Just hold still and hand it over. Don’t talk to me. Don’t say a word. I want the slug you took out of that tire.”

  There was no holding the crowd now. They surged in front of me, blocking out the cab, the cop, and any help I might have had.

  I tried to stall but I couldn’t. I wanted to turn but I didn’t. The hard object nudged my spine harder and even with all the voices and hullaballoo, I imagined I heard a cocking noise. Before I could comply with orders, the Voice that owned the hard object took matters out of my hands. It also took the slug out of my pockets. I had a sensation of a big hand exploring my right side and then leaving. It was a little weird.

  The Voice behind me suddenly laughed. A low chuckle that would have sounded perfect in graveyards and haunted houses. It was a sound I wouldn’t forget until I saw my next Boris Karloff rerun on Shock Theatre.

  “Now, stand there, Buster. Freeze. Turn around just once and your guts will be all over the sidewalk.”

  I stared dumbly ahead, looking at the weather tower, high up on Columbus Circle, that predicted more rain for tomorrow. I felt downright silly but it wasn’t my deal. Abruptly, as swiftly as it had come, the hard pressure left my back. The sudden loss of weight was like a wind passing over my own grave. I didn’t make the mistake of turning around either. I just began to whistle tunelessly and helplessly. The Voice had sold me a bill of goods. Turn and Be Killed. I was convinced the Voice’s owner wasn’t a bluff artist.

  I imitated a cigar store Indian while the cab whisked Memo Morgan off to the hospital cot he so badly needed. Watched while the crowd made book on just what exactly had happened. I shook my head, thinking all the while how somebody was trying so awfully hard to put Memo Morgan in the cemetary.

  Only when the taxi had careened around West Fifty-seventh Street, horn blasting away to clear traffic, did I do the old vaudeville bit. Slowly, I turned. My eyes searched without a prayer. Downtown Eighth Avenue mocked me with its horde of early evening pedestrians and hundreds of garishly lighted store fronts. I scanned the people closest to me. Typical New Yorkers. Variable, motley and nondescript. The bullet-taker could have been anyone. He could have been standing five feet from me or five hundred and I never would have known the difference. I’d only know his voice if I ever heard it again.

  He could have been a Martian for all I knew about him.

  But why would a Martian shoot a hole through an ambulance tire, then hang around to retrieve the bullet? Why would the Martian want to use such a crazy method to stop the ambulance in the first place?

  The answers to those questions could only come from one man. Memo Morgan. He’d need nine lives if he ever got out of this one. He’d already used up two in one short evening. And the day wasn’t over yet.

  There wasn’t much choice about my next move. The only way out of any mental pickle barrel is direct action. I found the candy store nearest the Garden and headed for the solitary phone booth planted in the rear between a coke machine and the glass candy case. I dialed Police Headquarters. I had a funny notion. If they gave Memo Morgan a bed by the window, he’d be able to see the windows of my office on West Fifty-sixth Street. He wouldn’t be able to see the Claudette Colbert advertisement.

  But I’d already forgotten about Miner and the free theatre tickets.

  I’d remembered Captain Michael Monks of Homicide. All the Police Department world hates a private detective. It’s been that way since La Guardia was a pup.

  But not when a private detective calls up and gives information.

  “We’ll burn the house of Brutus.”

  FIVE

  The dial tone died rapidly. Policemen never keep you waiting. A bored, sleepy voice identified the Department and asked me what my business was. I gave my name to the switchboard cop and asked myself if I had ever once called up Mike Monks just to see how he was feeling. I’d decided on No when the wholesome gruffness of the only cop I have ever loved broke in on my musing.

  “Well, well. Social call, Mr. Noon?”

  “Afraid not, Captain. Do you know a party by the name of Memo Morgan?”

  “Who doesn’t? Broadway is my beat, remember? What’s with him?”

  “Somebody beat hell out of him, Mike. About seven o’clock this evening on West Forty-fourth Street in the vicinity of the Ritz Theatre. Then they shot him in the belly with a .45 for good measure.”

  Monks’ bull voice almost climbed into tenor.

  “Why the guy’s a sweetheart! Hasn’t got an enemy in the world—”

  “They shot Lincoln,” I sighed. “Look, Mike. All sweetness to one side, a guy with a fabulous memory like Morgan’s could be pretty dangerous to somebody.”

  “Obviously.” Monks’ sarcasm was always monumental. “What’s it got to do with you? If he’s a client of yours, I’m Khrushehev.”

  I laughed. “I jus
t wandered into the Ritz and then he came staggering in, trailing blood like a paintbrush. And I’m trying to be cooperative like you’ve been begging me to for all these years.”

  “All of it, Ed.” His tone was official now. “I want all of it.”

  I gave him all of it. It wasn’t my baby, nobody was paying me a dime and I wasn’t bound by client’s ethics. Leaving nothing out, Monks heard it all, from the theatre scene to the tire incident and the session with the Voice.

  “Christ,” he sighed like the devout Catholic he was. “You mean you never got a look at this guy?”

  “Haven’t you been listening? He got the drop on me and he wasn’t fooling about my not turning around.”

  “Okay, okay. What kind of voice was it?”

  “If you ate nails, glass and small children for breakfast, you might sound the same way.”

  The snort at the other end of the line was explosive.

  “Thanks for ringing in. We’ll move on it right away. Stay away from that hospital, Ed. It’s a routine police matter and that’s all.”

  “I’ll bet. Doesn’t mean a fee to me anyway. I’m just interested in Memo Morgan pulling through. I’ll be at my office pretty soon. Will you call me when you get some news?”

  “Sure, sure. Now hang up and let me act like a policeman.”

  “Drop dead,” I said.

  “I love you too.” He hung up quickly.

  I slid out of the narrow booth, nodded at the old counterman who looked questioningly at me, and went home. Home was just a few blocks up Eighth. You turn west on Fifty-sixth and saunter one block and a half past Ninth. Into a crummy building lobby, enter a rattletrap elevator, go up three floors and walk down a badly carpeted hall. Past a lot of doors. One reads A NAKOOMIAN RUG DEALER, another says ALEXANDER ST. PETER WATCH REPAIRS. Then there’s an empty office the building landlords haven’t rented yet and voila!—ED NOON PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS. Home Sweet Mouse Auditorium.