There Is Something About a Dame Read online

  I smiled too because inside of me, anger was starting to dance around unreasonably. Remember the kid who pulled wings off butterflies and set fire to a dog’s tail? Well, we’d just crossed paths again.

  “I’ll climb all over you right here and now,” I said, “if you don’t tell me where you stand, Mr. Devlin. I haven’t had my second cup of coffee yet and when I haven’t had my second cup of coffee I’m not as nice as I can be. Do you tell me or do we start playing rough?”

  He didn’t say another word. He grunted something under his breath, thumbed a card from somewhere, out of an inside pocket and poked it under my nose. It took two seconds to read the small black print on the business card but a helluva lot longer to appreciate the joker that had sprung out of the deck. Shades of O. Henry.

  The story on the card was a real snapper too:

  V. DEVLIN

  Confidential Investigations

  I looked up from the card too late to realize that V. Devlin had vanished as quickly as he had come, lost somewhere in the bustling crowds of passersby.

  Leaving his threat and his occupation hanging on the early afternoon air.

  “Be thou familiar but by no means vulgar … ”

  FOURTEEN

  Headquarters was no different from the last time I’d paid a call. A desk sergeant, patrolmen lounging, coming in and out and an almost studied atmosphere of seeming busy. But I wasn’t fooled. They were busy. In a city the size of New York where thirteen million people live, love and have things happen to them, the Finest never have a dull moment. Sure, it’s routine but the routine varies with each new felony, misdemeanor and disturbing of the peace. Millican, the desk sergeant, was a little older and a little grayer, but he gave me the same big smile when I saw him.

  “Noon, m’lad,” he exploded. “Where you been keeping yourself?”

  “Morning, Millican. Oh, just out chasing clients. How’s crime?”

  He took his veined hands off his blotter and spread them.

  “Kids. Tough kids. You seen the amount of ’em been actin’ up lately. What’s come over this city of ours?”

  I nodded. “It’s the lack of interest in baseball. Monks in?”

  “Topside as usual. Go ahead.”

  I made a machine gun with my hands and shot him the way I always did because it always made him laugh. This time was no different. He was still guffawing as I bore right, skipped the squad room and went up a flight of poor stairs to Monks’ private office. I reminded myself to write a letter to Mayor Wagner about the social poverty of police stations.

  Monks’ door was ajar. I saw him planted like a mother hen over a stack of official reports so I walked right in. There wasn’t anybody else in sight. The corner of his desk held an open container of cold coffee and a half-eaten salami on wheat. He looked tired, unshaven and beat. He smiled hello and waved me to a chair. I sat down on the other side of the desk. The window behind him was open and pale April sunlight was trying to break into Headquarters.

  “You’re going to ruin your stomach if you keep skipping hot meals,” I said for openers.

  He yawned. “To hell with it. Look at these reports. Two knifings, a hit-and-run, a suicide and a barroom brawl. All in this precinct since five this morning. Nice, huh?”

  “You must have been talking to Millican. Any news from the hospital?”

  He leaned back in his chair and locked big hands behind his head. He’d taken his jacket off and rolled up his white shirt sleeves. The hair on his forearms was lying down too.

  “Same as before. Doc says we might get three words out of him some time tonight and all that may be is something like, ‘Where am I?’ Fact is, the staff up there is laying odds of two to one he doesn’t last till midnight.”

  “Poor fish,” I said. “Mike, we gotta talk to him. We’re dead without him.”

  His arms came down from his head. The eyes in the face that I knew and liked so well suddenly took on that keen look that had dazed many a crooked liar.

  “Edward, my son. We’ve known each other how long? Now I know you’re a humanitarian and you like Memo Morgan. But beyond a human feeling about whether he lives or dies, what the hell has he got to say that should be so damn interesting to you? C’mon, Eddie. I pass up what happened to your office yesterday on the grounds it just might have something to do with something else. But here you’ve got me making inquiries to England—you show up bright-eyed and bushy—still making questions about Memo Morgan. Now you know how long I’ve been a policeman. So wouldn’t you say you were leaving some details out?”

  I laughed. “You remind me of my old man. I never could kid him, either.”

  He didn’t smile. “I’m still your old man. So what’s the rest of it?”

  So I gave him all of it. Just like my father, he listened patiently, nodded a few times and grunted now and then. When I finished, he took a belated nibble at the stale salami sandwich, made a face and folded the rest of it up and dumped it in the wastebasket by his chair.

  “Shakespeare, huh?” was all he had to offer. “Noon, I don’t know how you do it. Who writes your stuff?”

  “Don’t you believe me?”

  “Certainly I do. After what we’ve both gone through, I never can afford not to.”

  I lit a Camel and stared at the glowing tip. Monks rubbed his eyes and stared at me.

  “What about Arthur Zwick?” I asked.

  Monks grunted again, fished around on the desk and came up with a stream of teletype. I glanced at it hurriedly … INFORMATION YOU REQUEST NEGATIVE … NO RECORD OF ARTHUR ZWICK RESIDENT THIS CITY… NOW that was something to frown about. I frowned.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Ed. So forget it. There’s no possibility they could have missed Zwick if he’s there. There’s a hundred ways they could locate him. Licenses, job, residence, registration numbers. Take London’s word for it. There just ain’t no Arthur Zwick. Not by that name, anyway.”

  “Maybe Sir Stewart was wrong about his address. They met in London and maybe Sir Stewart assumed—”

  Monks sighed and cut me short by reaching for a phone. “You’re grabbing for straws, kid, but I’ll try it anyway.” He got a line somewhere. “It’s Monks, Barney. On that Zwick name, try Canada, New York and Australia. I got a guy here who doesn’t care how we spend the taxpayer’s money. Yeah. Who else?” He hung up and groped for a cigar. “Of course, we know there is an Arthur Zwick. IBM card on him tracks him down from War Two. He’s about forty-three right now, according to his GI identification. Six feet one, 190 pounds, brown hair, brown eyes. Discharged in 1946. After that, nothing, of course.”

  While Monks was finding a cigar among the assorted junk on his desk, I walked over to the window. Memory and coincidence were starting to bounce me around a little. There was a card in my pocket that said V. Devlin Private Investigations. If Devlin wasn’t six feet one, one hundred and ninety pounds, brown-eyed and haired, then I was a Samoan’s uncle. Forty-three suited him, too. I hadn’t mentioned him to Monks at all. Thanks to Mr. Devlin’s attitude, our war seemed pretty private. It wasn’t high noon in the town square yet with the whole population looking on. Zwick, Zwick, Zwick. The name bugged me. I Wuv You and Wabbit Twacks. Hi, there Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny.

  “What’s eating you, Ed?” Monks’ voice behind me startled me. “That crack on your noggin bothering you?”

  I turned and shrugged, managing a weak smile.

  “You know how it is when you’re reading a book, Mike? The thing goes along just so far and you have all the facts and you ought to be able to stop and figure the whole thing out and guess what’s coming. Well, we’re at that stage. And we still can’t make two nickels out of the dime we got. It’s only been a day but there isn’t too much to wonder about except the mysterious Voice. But all the rest of it is there. Memo Morgan is the key. No buts about that. When he opens up, a lot of this smog might lift.”

  I walked toward the door. “Guess I’ll get out of here. I feel silly. Haven’t really done a
thing on my own since this mess started—”

  “Hold on, Ed.” Monks’ tone was interested. “How about a rundown on what you think you have?”

  I put my hand on his doorknob but I gave him what he wanted.

  “Sure, Mike. World famous actor is given evidence that missing Shakespeare play has been memorized by famous memory man. The actor adores Shakespeare as any great thespian will. Actor comes to town looking for the memory man. Memory man who is normally on the Broadway scene, suddenly disappears and holes up somewhere. Why? When the revelation of the play to the actor or the playgoing world would mean a fortune in money and reputation? This is the first indication that the play-undiscovered is a large hoax.

  “But wait. Suddenly, the memory man shows up at the Ritz theatre shot and beaten. Why there? Because he meant to go there or because he just happened to stagger into the first convenient doorway? Why does anyone-want to kill the memory man? And it gets better. The ambulance that takes him to the hospital has a .45 slug shot into the tire, hoping to kill the memory man a second time. Figures. He’s better off dead for somebody—why?

  “Somebody got something against memory, Shakespeare, or the world-famous actor? Who knows? Now, the plot really sickens. Enter the Voice. He wants to have the .45 slug from the tire. Takes it from nosey private investigator who went along for the ride. Why? Does his .45 mean something in particular? Why the trick voice with the bogey man business? Now the world-famous actor looks up the same private investigator who happened to walk into the case earlier. Coincidence or plan? We’ll forget that machine gun business for a while here. Now enter the friend with the flying red Dodge. Old actress-man-hater associate of the world-famous actor. She turns up in the oddest places. She just happens to have a father who happens to be a Shakespearian scholar. He just might like to get his hands on an undiscovered Shakespeare. Okay. Double, double, boil and bubble. Where are we?

  “And where and who is Arthur Zwick who must have started the whole thing? And will Memo Morgan make it? Tune in next week and find out for yourself and I wish we had a headache tablet sponsor. I could use a ton of them right now.”

  Monks was chortling. “You ought to be in the movies. Sometimes you’re funnier than the four Marx Brothers.”

  “Yeah, I’m a killer.”

  “Go on home and take it easy. Nothing will change till we hear from the hospital. Yeah, and we may get a lead on Zwick.”

  As a prophet, Monks batted 1.000. We got word from the hospital. From the hospital through Detective Sergeant Sanderson, James T. I was just bowing out of the sanctorum when James T. pushed past me without an apology or a hello. I stopped moving and got an earful.

  “Cap, I got bad news.” Sanderson was swallowing his Adam’s apple like he was ashamed of something.

  “What happened?” Monks leaned forward in his chair, emergency making him alert as it always did. I tensed in the doorway for the magic word that would make us or break us.

  Sanderson leaned on the desk with his bony, red-skinned hands, alternately looking from Monks to me and then to Monks again. He was patently wishing I was in New Jersey or the men’s room. Anyplace but his superior’s office.

  “Honestly, Cap, I can’t see how it was done. I had two of my best men at either end of the corridor and one on the door itself. I just don’t see how anybody could have leaked through to get to Morgan. Well, they got to him. It happened about a half hour ago. I couldn’t phone it in, Cap. So I hustled over here in the squad car to give it to you firsthand. I’m sorry, Cap. I’ll take the rap for this. I can’t blame the boys. It had to be an inside job. How in hell anyone could have got by us—”

  Monks’ face was expressionless. He wasn’t going to chew out one of his best men especially in front of an outsider. Even though that outsider was me.

  “Skip it, Jimmy. Just give me the details. Morgan probably didn’t feel a thing in the shape he was in. Knife, I suppose?”

  Sanderson blinked. “What knife?”

  I came back from the door, sudden relief flooding my insides. Monks was scowling up at the tall Sanderson, not yet realizing the difference.

  “Well, dammit, how was he finished off?”

  “Finished off?” Sanderson’s face was a portrait of confusion until comprehension split the mask. “Nobody finished him off, Cap. Memo Morgan ain’t dead yet. They just snatched him this afternoon.”

  “I must be cruel in order to be kind … ”

  FIFTEEN

  “They?” Monks boomed with his first show of official heat. “What the hell do you mean—they? You didn’t see anybody did you?”

  Sanderson, James T. made a face and his big shoulders sagged. He looked back at me for sympathy, found very little, and looked back at his superior, Captain Michael Monks.

  “Hold on, Cap,” Sanderson said in a low tone of voice to kill any idea he might be getting insubordinate. “You remember how we were staked out on the hospital? The setup was Morley and Finnegan parked in their car across the street. The building layout was McKenna and Hall at either end of the corridor on Morgan’s floor. The second. Joe Wiley was in a chair right outside Room 19, splitting four-hour shifts with Ryan and Santelli. Right? Well, today at ten-three-oh or thereabouts, it happened—”

  “You all had a softball game,” I suggested.

  “Very funny,” Sanderson blurted.

  Monks glared at me. “Go on, Jimmy. Wisecracking helps him think, believe it or not. What’s the rest of it?”

  Sanderson took heart from his captain’s obvious support. He warmed up to his narrative. I listened carefully, marveling once again how crime will out no matter how many protective measures the finest police organization in the world can take.

  “Well,” Sanderson sighed. “It had been pretty quiet right along. No visitors for the poor guy. I’d been checking with the doc in his office on the first floor about Morgan’s condition. It was still critical. Well, I went back upstairs and there was Joe Wiley out for the count in his chair.

  “Somebody had conked him from behind with a gun butt. That’s what he said it felt like. A nurse was bending over him trying to wake him up. I took a quick gander in the sick room. Bed empty as a whistle, no signs of a struggle. No blood on the sheets or the floor. Just about when I was wondering where the hell my boys on the corridor patrol had gotten to, three shots blasted from the outside. Like down in front of the building. So I rushed to the window and then what do you think I see?”

  I shook my head. “Two ballerinas, an elephant and a lion tamer.” I just can’t leave questions like that hanging in the air.

  Sanderson took the wisest course and ignored me.

  “There was McKenna and Hall pumping slugs into a car that was zooming out of the ambulance driveway. They got about four or five in but the heap ploughed down Ninth into traffic and they cut it out. Across the street, Morley and Finnegan lit out after the runaway. I’m telling you that hospital was in an uproar. They haven’t had so much excitement since that movie star was there for a kidney operation.”

  Monks cursed. “What’d Wiley have to say for himself when he came to?”

  Sanderson made a show out of looking at his fingernails. I could tell the coming explanation was going to be weaker than a teabag that’s been used three times.

  “Cap, he’s a good man. Can’t blame him really—”

  “Jimmy,” Monks growled. “You had three men in that corridor. Two on the hall, one on the door. This better be good.”

  Sanderson’s sighs filled the sunlit office once again.

  “Well, he says a dame came down the hall. How the hell were they to know? She was just a pretty little thing in a fur coat and slacks. No more than twenty or so according to the boys. Pregnant too. Seven months’ worth at least. She looked weepy and all three of them swear she wasn’t carrying anything bigger than a purse that couldn’t have held anything bigger than a compact. So—”

  “So,” I said. “McKenna and Hall went to the men’s room for a smoke and let Wile
y have an intimate chat with a good-looking pregnant little number. Ouch. I thought coppers were smarter than that.”

  Sanderson stared at me with amazement all over his big face. He wasn’t angry. Just dumfounded.

  “Look here, shamus. How the hell did you know that—?”

  “Nothing hard about it, James T. I’ve been in that corridor, remember. It’s only about forty feet long. The snatch couldn’t have been made and Wiley couldn’t have been dropped with McKenna and Hall in plain sight. So it figures they were off somewhere killing some time.”

  “Okay, Ed,” Monks said wearily. “They goofed.” He looked at Sanderson. “The girl decked Wiley?”

  Sanderson’s red face held the affirmative.

  “She dropped the purse while they were talking. Wiley bent down to pick it up. That’s all he remembers. But that girl couldn’t have gotten Morgan out of the building all by her lonesome. He wasn’t walking and she couldn’t have made it in her condition. Not being pregnant like that. She was five feet two or so. Brunette and young like they said?”

  Something new had been added all right. Savannah Gage was an actress. She might have managed the brunette hair, the crying, and the pregnancy with a pillow. But she never could have managed to make three city detectives think that her five feet ten was five feet two. Damn but this was turning into a three-ring circus. Memo Morgan’s life story would confound Solomon if he ever heard it.

  Monks’ next comment to Sanderson fairly dripped with official acid. “What about the kidnap car? Get a license number at least?”

  “Just a bum day all around, Cap. They lost it in traffic. A red Dodge, ’63 or so, according to Morley and Finnegan. It gave them the slip at Times Square. The traffic is murder down there—” he finished lamely.

  “You better tell me something sensible right away before I really get mad, Jimmy. You and your men behaved like a bunch of clowns today, you know that, don’t you?”