The Second Pulp Crime Read online

  “I’ve always wanted to kiss a man as ugly as you,” she said. “It wasn’t bad.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’ve had worse myself, but under better conditions.”

  “I’m wondering if it’s good enough to develop. I think it might be.”

  “You go on wondering about it and let me know.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  She moved over to a chair and lowered herself onto her neat behind and crossed her nice legs. From where I found a chair and sat, across from her, I could see quite a lot of the legs. She didn’t mind, and neither did I.

  “If you decide to develop it,” I said, “won’t Silas Lawler object?”

  She swallowed some more of her highball and looked into what was left. Her soft and succulent little mouth assumed lax and ugly lines.

  “To hell with Silas Lawler,” she said.

  “Don’t kid me,” I said. “I know he pays the bills.”

  “So he pays the bills. There’s one bill he may owe that he hasn’t paid. If he owes it, I want him to pay in full.”

  “For what?”

  “For the murder of Regis Lawler.”

  She continued to look into her glass. From her expression, she must have seen something offensive on the bottom. I looked into mine and saw nothing but good whisky and pure water. I drained it.

  “Maybe you don’t know what you said,” I said.

  “I know what I said. I said he may owe it. I’d like to know.”

  “And I’d like to know what makes you think he may.”

  “Start with that fairy tale about Regis and Constance Markley running off together. Just disappearing completely so they could have a beautiful new life together. Do you believe it?”

  “I don’t believe it. I don’t disbelieve it. I’ve got an open mind.”

  “Brother, if you’d known Regis Lawler as well as I did, you’d know the whole idea is phony. He just wasn’t the type.”

  “I’ve heard that. I’ve also heard that he was in love with Constance. It’s been suggested that he might have done for her what he wouldn’t have done for anyone else.”

  “That’s another phony bit. His being in love with Constance, I mean. He wasn’t.”

  “No? This is a new angle. Convince me.”

  “Maybe I can’t. I don’t have any letters or tapes or photographs. Neither does anyone else, thank God. I could give you some interesting clinical descriptions, but I won’t. Basically I’m a modest girl. I like my privacy.”

  “I think I get you, but I’m not sure. Are you telling me more or less delicately that Regis had love enough for two?”

  “Two? Is that all the higher you can count? Anyhow, what’s love? All I know is, we went through the motions of what passes for love in my crowd, and he seemed to enjoy it. Whatever you call it, he felt more of it for me than he felt for anyone else, including Constance, and I guess you couldn’t have expected more than that from Regis.” Her little mouth had for a moment a bitter twist. The bitterness tainted the sound of her words. She did not have the look and sound of a woman who had been rejected. She had the look and sound of a woman who had been accepted with qualifications and used without them. Most of all, a woman who had understood the qualifications from the beginning and had accepted them and submitted to them.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “I always have trouble understanding anything when it gets the least complicated. You were having Regis on the side of Silas, and Regis was having you on the side of Constance. Not that I want to make you sound like a chaser or a dish of buttered peas. Is that right?”

  “Damn it, that’s what I said.”

  “And Silas killed Regis in anger because he found out about it. Is that what you mean?”

  “It’s a solid thought. I like it better than the fairy tale.”

  “I’m not sure that I share your preference. I don’t want to hurt you, honey, but I doubt like hell that Silas considers you worth killing for. He just gave me permission to try my luck if the notion struck me, but maybe he didn’t really mean it. Anyhow, you’ll have to admit that it doesn’t sound like a case of homicidal jealousy.”

  “Who mentioned jealousy?” She shrugged angrily, a small gesture of dismissal. “He’s proud. He’s vain and sensitive. He’s made a hell of a lot out of nothing at all, but he can’t forget that he only went to the fourth grade and got where he is by doing things proper people don’t do. He still feels secretly inferior and insecure, and he always will. The one thing he can’t stand is the slightest suggestion of contempt. He’d kill anyone for that. Can you think of anything more contemptuous than taking another man’s wife or mistress?”

  I thought of seventy-five grand. It seemed to me that helping yourself to that much lettuce was a contemptuous act too, and I thought about discussing it as a motive for murder, but I couldn’t see that it would get me anywhere in present circumstances, and so I decided against it.

  “So he killed Regis,” I said. “That was a couple of years ago. And ever since he’s gone on with you as if nothing at all had happened. After murder, business as usual at the same old stand. Is that it?”

  “Sure. Why not? Laughing like hell all the time. Feeling all the time the same kind of contempt for Regis and me that he imagines we felt for him. Silas would get a lot of satisfaction out of something like that.” She looked down into her glass, swirling what was left of her drink around and around the inner circumference. Bitterness increased the distortion of her mouth. “He’ll throw me out after a while,” she said.

  “You’re quite a psychologist,” I said. “All that stuff about inferiority and insecurity and implied contempt. I wish I had as much brains as you.”

  “All right, you bastard. So I’m the kind who ought to stick to the little words. So I only went to the eighth grade myself. Go ahead and ridicule me.”

  “You’re wrong. I wasn’t ridiculing you. I never ridicule anyone. The trouble your theory has is the same trouble that the other theory has, and the trouble with both is that they leave loose ends all over the place. I can mention a few, if you’d care to hear them.”

  “Mention whatever you please.”

  “All right. Where’s the body?”

  “I don’t know. You’re the detective. Work on it”

  “Where’s Constance? Did he kill both of them? If so, why? He had no reason to hate her. As a matter of fact, they should have been on the same team. You, not Constance, would have been the logical second victim.”

  “I know. Don’t you think I’ve thought of that a thousand times? Maybe she knew he killed Regis. Maybe she learned about it somehow or even actually witnessed it. Damn it, I’ve told you something you didn’t know. I’ve told you about Regis and me. I’ve told you he was not really in love with Constance and would never have run away with her for any longer than a weekend. I’ve told you this, and it’s the truth, and all you do is keep wanting me to be the detective. You’re the detective, brother. I’ve told you that too.”

  “Sure you have. I’m the detective and all I’ve got to do is explain how someone killed a man and a woman and completely disposed of their bodies. That would be a tough chore, honey. Practically impossible.”

  “Silas Lawler’s been doing the practically impossible for quite a few years. He’s a very competent guy.”

  “He Is. I know it, and I’m not forgetting it. However, I can think of a third theory that excludes him. It’s simpler and it ties up an end or two. You said Regis didn’t love Constance. He just had an affair with her. Suppose he tried to end the affair and got himself killed for his trouble? She was a strange female, I’m told. Almost psychotic, someone said. Do you think she was capable?”

  Robin Robbins stood up abruptly. She carried her glass over to the ingredients and stood quietly with her back to me. Apparently she was only considering whether she should mix herself another or not. She d
ecided not. Depositing her glass, she helped herself to a cigarette from a box and lit it with a lighter. Trailing smoke, she returned to her chair.

  “Oh, Constance was capable, all right,” she said. “She was much too good to do a lot of things I’ve done and will probably do again and again if the price is right, but there’s one thing she could have done that I couldn’t, and that’s murder. And if you think that sounds like more eighth grade psychology, you can forget it and get the hell out of here.”

  “I don’t know about the psychology,” I said, “but I’m pretty sure that you don’t really think she killed Regis. If you did, you’d be happy to say so.”

  “That’s right.” She nodded in amiable agreement. “I wouldn’t mind at all doing Constance a bad turn, but she didn’t kill Regis. That’s obvious.”

  “I’m inclined to agree. In the first place, she couldn’t have got rid of the body. In the second place, if she could and did, why run away afterward? It wouldn’t be sensible.”

  “Well, it’s your problem, brother. I guess it’s time you went somewhere else and began to think about it.”

  “Yeah. I’m the detective. You’ve told me and told me. You haven’t told me much else, though. Not anything very convincing. You got an idea that Silas killed Regis because you and Regis made a kind of illicit cuckold of him, and you lure me here with free bourbon and tell me so, and I’m supposed to be converted by this evangelical message. It’s pretty thin, if you don’t mind my saying it. Excuse me for being skeptical.”

  “That’s all right. I didn’t expect much from you anyhow. I just thought I’d try.”

  “Try harder.”

  “I’ve got nothing more to tell you.”

  “Really? That’s hard to believe. You’re not exactly inexpensive, honey, and I’ll bet you have to earn your keep. What I mean is, you and Silas surely get convivial on occasions. Even intimate. Men are likely to become indiscreet under such circumstances. They say things they wouldn’t ordinarily say. If Silas killed Regis because of you, I’d think he’d even have an urge to gloat. By innuendo, at least.”

  She moved her head against the back of her chair in a lazy negative. “I’m a girl who knows the side of her bread the butter is on, and I earn my keep. You’re right there. But you’re wrong if you think Silas Lawler is the kind who gets confidential or careless. He’s a very reserved guy, and he protects his position. He tends to his own business, and most of his business nowadays is on the three floors of the building we just left. To be honest, he’s pretty damn dull. He works. He eats and sleeps and plays that damn piano, and once in a while he makes love. Once a month, for a few days, he goes to some place called Amity.”

  “Amity? Why does he go there?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I guess he has interests.”

  “Do you ever go with him?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m never invited, thank God. Who wants to go to Amity?”

  I took a deep breath and held it till it hurt and then released it.

  “That’s right,” I said. “Who does? Incidentally there’s something else that nags me. It seems to me that you’re trying to ruin a good thing for yourself, and I don’t understand it. What happens to you and all this if Silas turns out to be a murderer?”

  “Whatever it is, I’ll try to bear it. I may even celebrate. In the meanwhile, on the chance that I’m wrong about him, I may be as well be comfortable.”

  I stood up and looked down, and she stayed down and looked up, and because she was a shrewd and tough wench with looks and brains and queer attachments and flexible morals, I though it would be pleasant and acceptable to kiss her once in return for the time she’d kissed me once, and that’s what I did, and it was. It was pleasant and acceptable. It even started being exciting. Just as her hands were reaching for me, I straightened and turned and walked to the door, and she came out of the chair after me. She put her arms around my waist from behind.

  “It’s worth developing,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve decided.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “My own mind isn’t made up yet. I’ll let you know.”

  I loosened her hands and held them in mine against my belly. After a few seconds, I dropped them and opened the door and started out.

  “You ugly bastard,” she said.

  “Don’t call me,” I said. “I’ll call you.”

  “Go to hell,” she said.

  I got on out and closed the door softly and began wishing immediately that I hadn’t.

  CHAPTER 6.

  The next morning I checked a couple of morgues. The newspaper variety. I turned the brittle bones of old dailies and disturbed the rest of dead stories, but I learned nothing of significance regarding Constance Markley. She was there, all right, briefly and quietly interred in ink. No one had got excited. No one had smelled anything, apparently, that couldn’t eventually be fumigated in divorce court. I left the second morgue about noon and stopped for a steak sandwich and a beer on the way to my office. In the office, sitting, I elevated my feet and began to think.

  Maybe thinking is an exaggeration. I didn’t really have an idea.

  All I had was an itch, a tiny burr of coincidence that had caught in a wrinkle of my cortex. It didn’t amount to much, but I thought I might as well worry it a while, having nothing else on hand or in mind, and what I thought I would do specifically was go back and see Faith Salem again, and I would go, if I could arrange it, when Faith and the sun were on the terrace. She had said to call ahead of time, and so I lowered my feet and reached for the phone, and that’s when I saw the gorilla.

  He was a handsome gorilla in a Brooks Brothers suit, but a gorilla just the same. There’s something about the breed that you can’t miss. They smell all right, and they look all right, and there’s nothing you can isolate ordinarily as a unique physical characteristic that identifies one of them definitely as a gorilla rather than as a broker or a rich plumber, but they seem to have a chronic quality of deadliness that a broker or a plumber would have only infrequently, in special circumstances, if ever. This one was standing in the doorway watching me, and he had got there without a sound. He smiled. He was plainly prepared to treat me with all the courtesy I was prepared to make possible.

  “Mr. Hand?” he said.

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “I have a message from Mr. Silas Lawler. He would appreciate it very much if you could come to see him as soon as possible.”

  “I just went to see him yesterday.”

  “Mr. Lawler knows that. He regrets that he must inconvenience you again so soon. Apparently something important has come up.”

  “Something else important came up first. I was just getting ready to go out and take care of it.”

  “Mr. Lawler is certain that you’ll prefer to give his business priority.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you what to do. You go back to Mr. Lawler and tell him I’ll be around this evening or first thing tomorrow.”

  “Mr. Lawler is most urgent that you come immediately. I have instructions to drive you there and bring you back. For your convenience, of course.”

  “Of course. Mr. Lawler is notoriously considerate. Suppose I don’t want to go.”

  “Mr. Lawler hopes you will want to accommodate him.”

  “Let’s suppose I refuse.”

  “Mr. Lawler didn’t anticipate that contingency, I’m afraid. He said to bring you.”

  “Even if I resist?”

  “As I understood my orders, Mr. Lawler made no qualifications.”

  “Do you think you’re man enough to execute them without qualifications?”

  “I think so.”

  “In that case,” I said, “we’d better go.”

  I got my hat and put it over the place where the lumps would have been if I hadn’t. Tog
ether, like cronies, we went downstairs and got into his car, which was a Caddy, and drove in it to Silas Lawler’s restaurant plus. In the hall outside Silas Lawler’s private room, we stood and listened to the piano, which was being played. What was being played on it this time was not something by Chopin, and I couldn’t identify who it was by certainly, but I thought it was probably Mozart. The music was airy and intricate. It sounded as if it had been written by a man who felt very good and wanted everyone else to feel as good as he did.

  “Mr. Lawler doesn’t like to be interrupted when he’s playing,” the Brooks Brothers gorilla said.

  “You can’t be too careful with artists,” I said. “They’re touchy.”

  “Mr. Lawler’s a virtuoso,” he said.

  He didn’t even blink when he said it. It was obviously a word he was used to and not something special for effect. I wondered if they were granting degrees to gorillas these days, but I didn’t think it would be wise to ask. There wouldn’t have been time for an answer, anyhow, for the virtuoso stopped playing the music by Mozart, or at least not Chopin, and the gorilla knocked twice on the door and opened it, and I walked into the room ahead of him.

  Silas Lawler got off the bench and walked around the curve of the grand and stopped in the spot where the canary usually perches in nightclubs. He didn’t perch, however. He merely leaned. From the same chair in which she had sat yesterday, Robin Robbins looked across at me with a poker face, and I could see at once, in spite of shadows and cosmetics, that somebody had hung one on her. A plum-colored bruise spread down from her left eye across the bone of her cheek. There was still some swelling of the flesh too, although it had certainly been reduced from what it surely had been. She looked rather cute, to tell the truth. The shiner somehow made her look like the kid she said she never was.