Meanwhile Back at the Morgue Read online

  “I thought the hands were familiar,” I said. “Now bring me up to date, will you?”

  “Well, all this talk about Roses in the Rain and Marcus Manton has been Topic A on Broadway for months. Haven’t read the play, of course—nobody has—but the press releases have given some indication about the central part. Annalee Simms.” Her husky voice caressed the name tenderly. “Ever since I heard about it I’ve thought of nothing else, and I’ve studied my head off. I took classes with everybody, you know.”

  “No, I don’t know, Miss Tulip.”

  “Call me Fran. I’m punk on last names. Well, Berghof has classes and there’s the Studio—” She paused. “It’s been a tough grind, but I think I can do Annalee.”

  “You couldn’t have been too bad if one of those outfits accepted you for classes. Some of my friends are actors, so it’s not all Greek to me. Now what about that stage entrance last night?”

  The lovely face clouded, but excitement still shone in her eyes.

  “Talk gets around. About Mr. Manton’s still looking for a girl. And the papers were full of that accident in the elevator. And lots of things.”

  “‘Lots of things’ is pretty vague, Fran. Like what, for instance?”

  She gave me a secret-society look.

  “Well—about Darlene Donegan’s wanting the part and not getting it. Serves her right. She was much too old for Annalee. And Manton’s doll, that de Milo dope, wanting to play it. Did you see that picture she made, April in Algiers? What a turkey. I’ll never be as bad as she is.”

  “Your claws are showing. Tell me more.”

  Her eyes twinkled like a kid’s who knows where the doorkey is that everybody is going nuts looking for. And she hadn’t even found Darlene Donegan’s murder worth mentioning. She was an actress, all right.

  “So I know what kind of man Marcus Manton is, Ed. So I doll myself up like Annalee in the first act and walk in cold and unannounced and get that special effect I was looking for. It’s as simple as that. You got to believe me.”

  “I believe you,” I said. “For now. How did you know he’d be in my office?”

  She frowned. “I was all set to do my bit at the hospital. I’d heard about his accident from his secretary.”

  “Miss Carmody is the female blabber mouth of all time,” I said. “That woman is going to bury Marcus some day. But go on.”

  “Well, so I went to the hospital, just missed him going out, and asked the hospital people where he might have gone. He left your office number and address for anybody who might want him. Seems he leaves a number so he can be reached twenty-four hours a day.”

  She had gone back to her tea, so I guessed her story was over.

  “You missed a lot of things, Fran.” I was thinking that she might have popped in on Artie and Tip manhandling Marcus. Or the gun scene between me and Mr. Show Business. It was screwy. I looked at the impossibly beautiful Fran Tulip and wondered just how many fish she had sold me. “What’s your real name? Tulip couldn’t be logical for a girl who wants to play in Roses in the Rain.”

  She smiled shyly. “If I tell you, will you promise to forget it right away? It’s a silly name for an actress to have.”

  “Word of honor,” I said.

  She placed her pink tongue between her full red lips.

  “Woonsocki,” she said. “Fran Woonsocki. Isn’t it a pip?”

  I grinned. “ ‘Buckle down, Woonsocki.’ It’s a fine name. Long for a marquee maybe, but everybody doesn’t want to act for a living.”

  “That’s true,” she said soberly, “but I don’t want to be a housewife either. Brrrr.” She shuddered.

  My grin went away. “Later on, when we know each other a little better, I’ll give you my ideas on the subject.” I eyed my watch. “What time is your appointment with Marcus?”

  “Oh, I should be getting there in twenty minutes.”

  “Come on,” I said. “I’ll take you. My chariot’s only a block away.”

  I called for the check, got it, paid up at the drug counter and left a quarter for the counterman. He never saw the tip because his eyes were still two circles of awe for the brunette stunner by my side. He was still vibrating with admiration as we left the luncheonette.

  On the sidewalk, I extended an elbow to Fran. “My arm, Madame La Contessa. The carriage awaits in the garage down the street.”

  She liked that. Her ladylike chuckle filled my ears. “Forward, lovely man.”

  We were across Eighth Avenue and heading down the block when a slick Jaguar sedan slid smoothly ten yards ahead of us and braked to a halt. My hand slid smoothly toward my .45 and halted. The driver’s door snapped open with military smartness and Von Arnheim’s shining bald head poked out from behind the wheel and leered back at us with all the cheerfulness of the intelligent ghoul he was.

  Fran checked her stride, her long fingers digging into my arm fearfully, but I smiled and moved her up to Von Arnheim’s Jaguar. The Jag was still purring with mechanical life.

  I scanned the car rapidly. Even the license plates looked brand new, but more important, Von Arnheim was the sole occupant.

  “Morning, Baron,” I said politely enough. “How’s death?”

  Von Arnheim’s grin could only be described as enthusiastic. His gimlet eyes swept approvingly over the man destroyer on my left arm.

  “May I give you a lift, Mr. Noon? And the so-lovely creature on your arm? I would be delighted. I want to discuss something with you.”

  I nodded and handed Fran into the rear of the sedan. I got in next to her, suddenly conscious of the healthy hips brushing mine. She smelled nice, too. Like roses in the rain.

  “Let me guess what you want to discuss, Baron. But first I must tell you we are due at the Manton Building in about fifteen minutes. Think you can swing it?”

  Von Arnheim leaned toward us over the back seat.

  “Done, Mr. Noon. And the charming creature?”

  I smiled. “Same place. Miss Tulip, allow me to present Leopold Kurtz Von Arnheim. Has sword cane, will travel. This is Fran Tulip, Von Arnheim.”

  Though he was sitting, Von Arnheim’s heels seemed to click together as he managed a half bow. “A pleasure, my dear. At your service.”

  Fran was enjoying the banter. “Pleased to meet you. Are you really a baron?”

  Von Arnheim shifted into gear and flung a laugh over his military shoulders.

  “Merely a whim of Mr. Noon’s, dear lady. He has many of them. More than any other man I have ever known.”

  I caught his eye in the rearview mirror. “I consider that a compliment, Baron.”

  He laughed. “It is, Mr. Noon. It is.”

  The Jaguar made the corner crossing in nothing flat and held for a light. Von Arnheim hummed idly to himself, swung left and merged with downtown traffic. He was pleased about something. A German cat that had swallowed a canary, and not necessarily a German one, either.

  I studied his bullet head. He was hatless, but I’d seen the bowler hat placed carefully at his side. The sword cane-walking stick lay across the cushions under his hat, like a weapon. The weapon it was.

  I waded right in.

  “If it’s any satisfaction to you, you hit the bull’s-eye last night.”

  “Ah, so.” His eyes sought mine again fleetingly, then went back to his driving. “I am pleased you were able to divert your death. Also pleased that I had gauged Mr. Marcus Manton’s reactions so precisely.”

  I chuckled. “Can you do that with horse races? I’d be interested.”

  He chuckled, too, because we were sharing a joke. Fran Tulip watched us with that half smile a person wears when he can’t share the joke of the people he is with. But Von Arnheim suddenly stopped laughing.

  “Seriously, my friend, I have gone over the charts and figures again and my findings are not exactly heartwarming. Once more I feel honor bound and privileged to warn you of impending doom.”

  Fran jerked at that, but I squeezed her elbow warningly, trying to reassur
e her at the same time. I nodded to Von Arnheim, knowing he could see my face a helluva lot better than I could see his. I kept my face straight.

  “Go on, Baron. I’m listening.”

  Von Arnheim slowed for another red light. He shifted at the wheel and turned to stare at us. Stare hard. The bloodlessness of his face once more struck me. No blood and no hair.

  “Mr. Noon, the Manton Building will be the scene of much activity this afternoon. It is in all the charts and figures. Make no mistake, my friend—” he flung a glance at the fancy watch tucked under his rolled-down glove—“at precisely half an hour past twelve—” He paused dramatically.

  “Don’t stop now,” I begged him.

  He smiled. His death’s-head smile.

  “Just so.” He clicked his tongue between his small teeth. “Another attempt will be made upon the life of Marcus Manton. Someone will try to push him off the terrace of his office penthouse.”

  I sighed, but the man’s strong belief and tone of finality got home to you somehow. I held back a slight uneasiness.

  “Who, Mr. Arnheim?”

  “You, Mr. Noon.”

  I laughed and laughed and laughed. We had just replaced Gallagher and Shean.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I stopped laughing. And said nothing more. Fran Tulip looked questioningly at me, but I just shook my head. Von Arnheim concentrated on the wheel. He knew enough to quit when he was ahead.

  The silence held until the Jaguar slowed to a full stop in front of the Manton Building. Broadway was humming with traffic noises and hurrying people. Passersby were pausing to gawk at the glass doors of the Manton Building and make ecstatic comments about the accident that filled the morning papers. “Four lovely young actresses trapped in falling elevator,” et cetera. Two burly boys in blue were flanking the glass doors, as quiet and steady as book ends. Young, good-looking cops. Monks was doing his job the only way he knew how, officially and in an orderly fashion. The morning September air was bright with promise and fresh sunlight, but I felt a pall hanging over everything. Gaudy flowers at a funeral make me feel the same way.

  I helped Fran Tulip out on the sidewalk. We drew a little attention. A couple of stenos on their lunch hour buzzed like bees at sight of the fabulously beautiful Fran. Four or five Runyon-type people—loud clothes and blue-black faces—scowled at us and sneered sickeningly, newspapers jutting from their coat pockets. I sneered back at them and poked my head down to where Von Arnheim could see my face.

  “Look, Baron. If you haven’t got a date for golf or anything, how about sticking around for the fun?” I dug some dimes out of my pocket. “Just load that parking meter and come on up to Manton’s office. You might give me some more laughs.”

  For answer, he switched the ignition key off with one gloved hand and placed his bowler at a jaunty angle on his funny skull. His eyes twinkled.

  “The company of men such as yourself is all that I ask of life, Mr. Noon. I trust Miss Tulip has no objections?”

  I winked. “Don’t be silly. She’s yours any time you snap your fingers. Dames are nuts for Continentals.”

  His smile would have reached to the Battery.

  “Apart from that, you would like to keep an eye on me, hein?”

  “Hein, mein Herr Baron,” I said. “See you upstairs. You’ll find the parking meter no trouble at all.”

  Von Arnheim laughed. “Do not kill anybody before I arrive, Mr. Noon.”

  “That’s a promise. Scout’s honor.”

  Fran was fidgeting impatiently by the glass doors. I took her arm and led her into the lobby, which was only slightly smaller than the old Aquarium.

  She shivered in the folds of the toggle coat. It made her curved lines curvier.

  “Who’s your friend? That little guy gives me the creeps.”

  I nodded. “He’ll never replace Sinatra, but he’s important. He might be the key to this whole screwy mess. He always seems to know what’s going on. Most especially, I think he likes to play with telephones and seems to know where all the bodies are buried.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Stop talking like a movie detective, will you please? I’m from Brooklyn, remember?”

  While we waited for the elevator and on the subsequent ride up to the sixteenth floor, I briefed her. I had her eyes popping before I was halfway through the crazy details. She dimly remembered reading about Von Arnheim and his weird book about death. It was good medicine for her. The case of nerves she might have had reading for the biggest role of her life never had a chance competing with the bedtime story I told her. By the time we’d hit the executive-suite floor she’d almost forgotten why we came in the first place. But not entirely.

  The doors slid open and we stepped through. Same big desk, same cool, cold, calculating Miss Carmody, sitting like some high-priced doodad on her receptive fanny. I had an idea Miss Carmody’s fanny was more receptive than she let on. The former chorus girl gone straight.

  She looked up over her Helena Rubinstein fingernails, tilted her cosmetic mouth at us and sniffed. For a second I thought her nose wasn’t real, and I wasn’t too sure about her double set of eyelashes. The sniff was for me but the eyes were impressed with Fran Tulip. Decidedly impressed.

  “Oh.” Miss Carmody’s manufactured voice trembled on an octave. “Mr. Manton is expecting you, Mr. Noon.” She measured Fran. “Are you the lady that Mr. Leader has come to see?”

  “One and the same,” I snapped cheerily, marching my gorgeous gal right past Miss Carmody’s desk. “I’ll usher her in. Thanks, Carmody.”

  She drew herself up as rigidly as if I’d goosed her.

  “Miss Carmody, if you don’t mind.”

  Fran was enjoying the whole thing, so I laid it on a little thicker. Before we marched down the hall to the corridor that meant Marcus Manton, I reached across the desk and patted Miss Carmody on her carefully controlled face.

  “Sure, miss, sure. I’ll do that if you’ll do something for me. Try not to blab the news of the day all over the place, huh? You talk too much. To too many people.”

  Her face exploded. “Well—I never! Of all—”

  She was still blustering and gabbling behind us when I swung the door of the inner sanctum open. And ran smack into Bud Tremont and Lisa de Milo coming out. The four of us jammed in the doorway for a brief instant and then separated as if we were choosing up sides.

  Lisa de Milo said something under her breath and her deep eyes shot me signals of genuine appeal. She tightened a fur stole—mink this time—around her white throat and moved past me, nodding courteously to Fran. Bud Tremont didn’t let it go at that. His surly face came apart with a low growl and his back arched in his sporty tweed coat. He was unshaven, uncombed and uncouth. He’d wanted to brush right by, but at sight of me he halted and his big hands came up out of the coat, knotted and ready.

  “Well,” he breathed fiercely, “if it isn’t Dirty Eddie, the boy detective. Hold on, Lisa. I wanna talk to this mug.”

  I moved Fran over to one side and put my teeth together.

  “Hello, Champ. Or is it chump? I forget which. Nice seeing you again, Lisa.”

  His ugly smile faded and he took a big step toward me. Lisa jumped anxiously and tugged at his sleeve, her eyes pools of worry and tension. She’d been crying.

  “Please, Bud. You, Mr. Noon—do not pick on Bud. He is in a bad temper today.”

  Bud Tremont hit her. The back of his hand went right across her lovely mouth. Fran shrieked and Lisa toppled back against a leather chair, her breath coming out of her deep chest in a frightened gasp. Miss Carmody made some kind of noise from the safety of the other end of the hall.

  “Shut up!” snarled Tremont. “This wise guy fixed us plenty with those cops yesterday. His cop pals workin’ on me all night with their damn questions. You didn’t get kid-glove treatment either. I’m gonna fix this bastard now.”

  He rushed me, but I was ready. And way ahead of him. I didn’t like him. I would never like him. I didn’t l
ike a thing about him. Not the way he talked or the way he thought or the way he treated his women.

  I shot the tip of my shoes into his ankle. Right in the area where his shoe ended and his trousers began. He howled his head off and the dirty expression on his face vanished in a grimace of pain. While he was still grimacing and off balance, I rammed a knuckle sandwich into his mouth. His big body shook with the blow and he hit the wall behind him with a noisy thud. He came off the wall slowly, still conscious, his eyes two chunks of burning hate, his whole weight shuddering with violence. He lunged forward. He stopped only when he saw the nose of my .45 aimed at his middle.

  “Mind if we finish this some other time, Champ? There are ladies present.” Lisa ran to him and put her arms around him, just like yesterday. Just like yesterday he let her, never taking his eyes off me. His hate-hot eyes.

  “Loughran never taught you that one,” he growled through his cut lips.

  I shook my head, feeling Fran huddling behind me.

  “No, he didn’t. I learned that one by myself. The hard way. College of Hard Knocks. They have an annex on West Farms.”

  He stopped shaking with anger and ran a tongue around the blood in his mouth.

  “I’ll get you, buster. I’ll get you good, later.” He let Lisa lead him to the neutral corner of the elevator.

  “Sure you will,” I said. “And you know where. See you around.”

  That ended it for then. With Lisa de Milo helping him down the hall and him letting her, liking to play the sick kid whose hurts need attending. But Lisa stared past his big shoulder, her damn fine eyes shooting me messages of “Please” and “Be nice” and “I must talk to you.” It didn’t make sense. But there wasn’t time to think about that.

  I pushed Fran down the connecting corridor that led to Marcus’ office. She was wide-eyed with wonder about me and her white cheeks were tinged with excitement.

  “Boy! Things happen around you all the time, don’t they, Ed? Do you have a good life insurance policy? My uncle could write you out one.”