The Spitting Image Read online

  I bit my lip. The floor around him was a pool of vermilion. Like the Red Sea. I’m not being funny. Just descriptive.

  I looked at the desk. Two angry furrows had gouged a fistful of wood out of the top. And only twenty minutes ago I had been bothered by a simple thing like a burning match.

  I stepped over Anton and went to the telephone. The Wexler dame was still crying. I looked at my watch.

  Eight-thirty-five. And I hadn’t had my coffee yet.

  I felt ginger-peachy. Simply ginger-peachy. On top of an empty stomach, I was mentally picturing what a certain lieutenant of the Homicide Department would have to say when he heard about this one.

  It was easy enough to guess.

  TWO

  Lieutenant Michael Monks of the Homicide Department of the city of New York didn’t let me down. He didn’t have sixteen kinds of fits. He had seventeen. And between all the beat cops, detectives, fingerprint men, and newsies rushing back and forth, doing everything proper and legal to get Anton off my office floor and properly D.O.A.’ed for his trip down to the Police Morgue, every one of his fits began and ended with me.

  It wasn’t that he had it in for me. I’d been pretty good for him in the past, what with getting him off the hook a few times. If anything, he had come to regard me as a necessary evil. Nobody loves a private detective. Especially a cop. It’s just like a scab when there’s a strike. Everybody hates you. But at least Monks was a square cop. Which is the best thing you can say for any cop. If you have to say something nice about a cop, that is.

  In his own sandpaper-voiced words:

  “—why is it always you? Corpses come calling on you, stiffs love you for company. Every time there’s a dead one, two-to-one Ed Noon is standing by. Why? That’s all I ask. Why the hell don’t you get divorce cases or petty larceny or bodyguard jobs? Why is it always homicide? This chauffeur joker that got his now—”

  “Monks,” I sighed wearily. “Let up. Please let up. I just met Anton. We kicked it around like I told you. A dozen times I’ve told you. But if you’re suggesting I had anything to do with his fade-out, you’re ready for your pension.”

  We were alone now in the office. Except for a dry-eyed June Wexler, a bad red splotch on the center of the floor, and maybe a small army of coppers outside the door and all over the building. Nothing had turned up yet.

  Monks hooked his thumbs in his waist. What looked like thumbs anyway. Sausages were more like it. He was a big man, nobody to fool around with; and one of the homeliest kissers this side of the Bronx Zoo made him seem even tougher.

  His snort was prodigious too.

  “Ed, you’re clean enough for my dough. But you’ve hung me up again. I’ll have you all over this investigation. You’re smack in the middle again. And right on top of that Dolores case too.”

  My smile was flat.

  “My luck for odd clientele is still holding.”

  “Come again?”

  “I’ve gone from female giants to twins. Miss Wexler is one of the famous Wexler twins. You must have heard of them by now.”

  I had stuck June Wexler in the Ladies’ Room until the photogs had left. They would have had a field day with her on the strength of her rep and all that dough.

  She had been bearing up pretty well since her fold-up. The tears were gone now. And only the very beautiful face remained. A little puckered from all those waterworks, of course, but still beautiful.

  Monks looked from her to me and grunted. He left his hat on. His thumbs left his waistline and fanned out.

  “Well, Miss Wexler, you’ll have to answer some questions.”

  Her eyes sought mine. I took my cue.

  “She’s my client, Lieutenant. I can explain why—”

  “Never mind what you can explain, Mr. Noon.” His tone was just as sarcastic as mine. “I want her to explain. She doesn’t have to violate your damn business code. But do I have to remind you she’s a witness in a murder case? On those grounds, I ask the questions and she gives the answers. Understand?”

  He had me there. “I bow to your superior argument.”

  “Nuts,” he said without malice. “Now, I want to hear your side of it, Miss.”

  She was one of those dames who can’t talk sitting down. Either that or she knew she had a figure and wanted to make the most of it. Because she started to walk around the office like a model showing off the newest thing in furs.

  “Well, I hardly know where to begin. Or what to say. I’ve never been involved in anything like this before—”

  She couldn’t know she was wasting all her talent on Monks. He’s been married to the same girl for twenty years and loved every minute of it. But he was patient with her. Which surprised me.

  “Sure. I know. But what were you doing here?”

  “Oh.” That caught her off-guard. But she recovered with a slow, dazzling smile. “Mr. Noon is an old friend of mine. He helped the family recover some stolen property a year or so ago. A maid of ours, you know. Mr. Noon was very efficient and managed to keep the whole affair within the household.”

  Good girl, I thought. Monks only scowled.

  “Mr. Noon is very efficient. Is that all? Isn’t there something else that might account for your presence here?”

  “Why, Lieutenant.” This time she let him have the charm act full blast. “Haven’t you noticed that Mr. Noon is rather a good-looking man? I think that should be a good enough reason.”

  She was going great guns now. I say that because underneath the charm routine she was still plenty upset.

  “No, I never noticed,” Monks growled. “But it’ll have to do for the time-being. So you came for some chin-chin with your old friend, Mr. Noon.” He paused, and his eyes were foxy. “At eight o’clock in the morning?”

  She let herself laugh. It couldn’t have been easy. But her laugh was light and playful.

  “The car was taking me uptown to my lawyer, Mr. Crandall. I just happened to realize we were passing Mr. Noon’s office. My chauffeur let me out—I instructed him to wait. I thought it might be nice to see Mr. Noon again. After all this time.”

  Monks nodded. As if he agreed entirely it would be nice to see Mr. Noon again.

  “Go on.”

  “Well, I was pleased to find him in. We talked a good deal about old times. And then, quite unexpectedly, Anton rushed in. He acted like a crazy man.”

  “Like a crazy man?”

  “Yes.” Now, she really strutted around the room. Excitedly gesturing so that you might have thought that ten men had grappled in the office. “Anton insisted that Mr. Noon had become unduly familiar with me. And while Mr. Noon attempted to explain, Anton suddenly went berserk. He charged Mr. Noon with his feet. I screamed ar d all I can remember is the awful sound of that gun going off—”

  “How many times?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t—”

  “How many shots did you hear?”

  “Three-I think.”

  Monks nodded his head like he was still agreeable to all he had heard. He went to the desk and idly ran those sausage-like fingers along the two furrows in the desk. Then he looked at the floor.

  “One, two, three,” I counted for him. “That’s right.”

  “I don’t need your help, Mr. Noon.”

  “Oh, for Christ sake. Cut it out. The pair of you are mistering me to death.”

  “Fair enough,” he barked. “Now, you cut it out. Both of you.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that I’ve just listened to the peachiest yarn this side of a fairy tale. No offense, Miss Wexler, but your story smells. To high heaven. Now, let’s have some facts.”

  “Fair enough,” I said earnestly. “I am an American, born right in this country, always vote the straight—”

  He made hams of his hands. So I cut it out. I never ride him too far. Miss Wexler was biting her nice lips. Monks had made her nervous again.

  “Listen, Ed, let’s get this straight. I got a lot of respect for y
ou. Always have. You’re a little too cute sometimes. But you’ve got brains besides moxie. I like that in a man. Nobody’s trying to pin anything on you. You know that. I’ve cooperated with you plenty in the past. And I’ll still do it. But for the love of Mike, will you stop treating the Police Department like a bunch of idiots? You’re in the soup again. A murdered man in your office. Okay, so your .45 hasn’t been fired in three weeks. Fine. But we still haven’t got the .45 that was just a half hour ago. So while you’re not it, you’re still not clear of all responsibility. Try to remember that while I try to forget how mad I get when people feed me yarns straight from the baloney factory. Now, give. Don’t worry. It’ll be off the record. Just between us girls. But I’m not walking out of here until I get a straight story.”

  I lit a cigarette and gave Miss Wexler one. I guided her to a chair. She sat down in it without a murmur.

  “Well,” Monks fairly roared. “What’s it going to be?”

  I looked at her but I was talking to him.

  “That makes two of us, Mike. She fed me a story too. A hell of a lot better than the one she told you. She said Anton was following her and maybe trying to kill her. She said her sister April had been trying to have something happen to her. She said she was afraid of what might happen. But when Anton busted in here, she goaded him into taking the boot to me. Then he got it. She said a lot of things. It’s your move, sister.” Now I was talking to her. “You heard the lieutenant. Tell us another story. And this time, kindly omit the fish.”

  Monks went over to her. “Is that on the level, girlie?”

  “I’m afraid it is.” She looked tired. “But I had to get Anton mad. So Mr. Noon could maybe beat him up and scare him off following me.”

  “Thanks for nothing,” I said, thinking what Anton’s boots might have done to my streamlined profile.

  “Let’s have the rest of it.” Monks never lets go. He’s like a landlord after the rent money.

  Miss Wexler looked at us out of big, limpid eyes. She shrugged and ground out her cigarette. That girl was beginning to baffle me. She had more moods than a baseball manager in a tight game.

  “April and I are identical twins. No one could ever tell us apart except for the fact that we’re two different types. April is sort of a loose tooth. Conservative, I guess. Real icky. A square. Meaning we dress different, talk different.” I could see where I was going to be grateful for that. Nothing annoys me more than twins who are dead ringers who wear matching outfits down to a hairdo. And do everything to make it harder on the friends and relations to tell them apart.

  “Lately, I don’t know quite how to say this, funny things have been happening. Nothing you could put your finger on, nothing definite that is. And yet—”

  “Lady, please don’t stop there,” Monks implored with a put-on whine.

  “Well—” now that she saw she had our undivided attention, the ham actress in her jumped right out into view. Beneath the silk beat the heart of a Davis. “Like last month, I was just leaving the house, when a huge, ornamental vase from the upper terrace crashed right next to me, missing me by the proverbial eyelash. That was just the beginning, it seems.”

  “Beginning of what?” Monks wanted to know.

  “The beginning of three attempts on my life.”

  I took the butt out of my mouth. “What do you call three attempts on your life?”

  She bristled like she’d found a porcupine under her bed.

  “That vase and the time somebody locked the garage door behind me and the garage mysteriously caught fire. I managed to break the window and climb out. Which was a pretty good trick considering I was pretty well tanked on the champagne I had guzzled at the party I was coming from.”

  The lieutenant was a little baffled by her change of vernacular. Either that or the fable of recent vintage was still too fresh in his mind.

  “Can you prove any of this?”

  For answer, she ran her sleeve up past her elbow. A newly healed wound glowed faintly on the soft underside of her arm.

  “That’s a memento of the window I busted saving my life.”

  Monks grunted, his tone clearly implying that she could have cut herself with a broken champagne glass.

  “You said three attempts, Miss Wexler,” I reminded her. “That makes only two.”

  “There were three.” Her mouth zippered on a grim, unfeminine line. “Four nights ago, last Wednesday it was, I had a headache. April was very sweet. She mixed me something while I was in bed. I would have drunk it too, I was feeling that miserable, when I remembered the vase and the garage thing. I didn’t take the drink. I hid it under the bed, substituting a duplicate empty. Next day I took it to one of the guys in my crowd. He’s a premed student. I told him it was just a gag. But what he told me wasn’t funny at all.”

  “It couldn’t have been,” I said. “There was enough sleeping powder in it to kill a large horse.”

  Her eyes widened in wonder. “How did you know?”

  “Don’t be simple,” I growled. “Poison would make it murder. An overdose of sleeping powder can be an accident.”

  She gave me one of those toothpaste-ad smiles of hers. Like she was pleased I understood.

  “That’s exactly what I figured. So I was on my guard after that. And when I got the notion that Anton was up to no good, I was really scared. So that’s why I came to you. He’s always been hanging around me lately. I remembered reading recently how you solved that case about that awfully big girl and all those diamonds that were missing. Honest, that’s the truth … everything that’s happened since, you know about—poor Anton—”

  “Is your sister a good shot with a Colt .45?” I asked.

  She paled. The meaning was clear at fifty feet even.

  “Don’t look so shocked,” Monks rasped. “From what you’ve told us, it certainly looks like Anton got what was meant for you. That would account for two slugs in the desk instead of three in him. Nobody could have missed him twice at that range. And you were behind the desk.”

  “Okay,” I said. “That’s it. It all points to April. But why? Is it some man?”

  “No.” Her mouth pinched itself. “She doesn’t care for men. Doesn’t even like men. It’s not that.”

  “We’re not playing Twenty Questions, girlie,” Monks said.

  She wet her lips. Which made them very kissable even if she wasn’t my type.

  “I see I’d better explain. You’re right. There is a good reason. April and I will be twenty-one on the thirteenth of this month. That’s three days from now. On that day, both of us will split an estate that comes to a little more than two million dollars.”

  I grinned. “Unless of course, there is only one remaining heiress—”

  “Both of us,” she said again. “Or one of us.”

  THREE

  This Monks, like I’ve been telling you, is a pretty tough cookie. He doesn’t play around with an idea too long because as soon as he gets one he acts on it. I say that because in the space of ten minutes we were in his car heading uptown as fast as the law allowed. We being Monks, myself, and Miss June Wexler of the Thousand and One Stories. Monks’ car is one of those standard police jobs. No class, no dash, but a good motor. And small. Miss Wexler was neatly crushed between the two of us. But it was nice crushing. Monks’ flattened nose wrinkled at her perfume. Normally I don’t go for the smell-water on dames but Miss Wexler’s brand was just right. I guess it was a cross between My Transgression and Sweet Summer Night. But I never asked her.

  The lieutenant never asked her either. It was easy enough to understand just what was passing through his police-academy mind. And it wasn’t the names of perfumes. Monks wanted to hear April Wexler’s side of the story. Because June was bustin’ out all over when it came to nice, homy narratives.

  She gave me the business in the car. The sexy, feminine business. The sort of business that is real horseplay between grown-ups. She was a real dame though.

  You don’t have to be too old
or too experienced to miss a dress that remains a good three inches past smooth, rounded knees. Your vision could be 80-80 and you’d still feel a firm breast pressing into your arm. I missed none of these things. And I’m barely thirty and don’t need glasses yet.

  So much for love. Monks’ attention was on the road. Miss Wexler’s attention was On me. If Anton had meant anything at all in her wild young life, he was probably having St. Vitus in his drawer down at the morgue. She was one crazy kid.

  I moved my arm away from her and got out my cigarettes. She gave me the toothpaste-ad smile again and blinked her lashes when I lit one for her. Monks grunted something under his breath. I could just read his old-family-man thoughts.

  “Miss Wexler,” I changed the subject. “Why do you think your sister wants to kill you? Even with a fair split she gets about a million bucks. Why would she risk a thing like murder?”

  “I just know she is, that’s all.” She fairly hissed the way females can. “And don’t call me Miss Wexler. Please, Ed. It’s such a stuffy name.”

  “All right. June, then. But you can’t just know a thing like that. There has to be a logical fact.”

  “Something that’ll stand up in court.” Monks spoke for the first time.

  “Oh, I’ve got proof enough,” she insisted airily. “Another one of the guys in my crowd is working for his bachelor’s in psychology. He says April might have a twin complex. I forget what he called it exactly. You know, just hating the very idea that somebody else looks exactly like them, not wanting to be a carbon copy of anyone else in the whole wide world. Anyway, he says that April has a complex something like that. That she wants to be just herself. And she can’t be just herself with me running around looking just like her.”

  Monks grunted again. I shrugged. At face value, it sounded strong enough. But hell, the records were loaded with twins who felt exactly the opposite. Twins who were inseparable in looks, ways, modes of life, right up until death. And reveling in their very exactness. Look at the Mauch twins, the Blackburn twins, all the twins who had been performers in show business. But maybe the Wexler twins were different. Maybe two million dollars was difference enough.