The Essential Noir Bundle, page 83
“Well, the police have—Listen, she was his mistress, wasn’t she?”
I nodded. “When I knew them.”
She stared at her glass while saying, “He’s my father. I never liked him. I never liked Mamma.” She looked up at me. “I don’t like Gilbert.” Gilbert was her brother.
“Don’t let that worry you. Lots of people don’t like their relatives.”
“Do you like them?”
“My relatives?”
“Mine.” She scowled at me. “And stop talking to me as if I was still twelve.”
“It’s not that,” I explained. “I’m getting tight.”
“Well, do you?”
I shook my head. “You were all right, just a spoiled kid. I could get along without the rest of them.”
“What’s the matter with us?” she asked, not argumentatively, but as if she really wanted to know.
“Different things. Your—”
Harrison Quinn opened the door and said: “Come on over and play some Ping-Pong, Nick.”
“In a little while.”
“Bring Beautiful along.” He leered at Dorothy and went away.
She said: “I don’t suppose you know Jorgensen.”
“I know a Nels Jorgensen.”
“Some people have all the luck. This one’s named Christian. He’s a honey. That’s Mamma—divorces a lunatic and marries a gigolo.” Her eyes became wet. She caught her breath in a sob and asked: “What am I going to do, Nick?” Her voice was a frightened child’s.
I put an arm around her and made what I hoped were comforting sounds. She cried on my lapel. The telephone beside the bed began to ring. In the next room “Rise and Shine” was coming through the radio. My glass was empty. I said: “Walk out on them.”
She sobbed again. “You can’t walk out on yourself.”
“Maybe I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Please don’t tease me,” she said humbly.
Nora, coming in to answer the telephone, looked questioningly at me. I made a face at her over the girl’s head. When Nora said “Hello” into the telephone, the girl stepped quickly back away from me and blushed. “I—I’m sorry,” she stammered, “I didn’t—”
Nora smiled sympathetically at her. I said: “Don’t be a dope.” The girl found her handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes with it.
Nora spoke into the telephone. “Yes … I’ll see if he’s in. Who’s calling, please?” She put a hand over the mouthpiece and addressed me: “It’s a man named Norman. Do you want to talk to him?”
I said I didn’t know and took the telephone. “Hello.”
A somewhat harsh voice said: “Mr. Charles?… Mr. Charles, I understand that you were formerly connected with the Trans-American Detective Agency.”
“Who is this?” I asked.
“My name is Albert Norman, Mr. Charles, which probably means nothing to you, but I would like to lay a proposition before you. I am sure you will—”
“What kind of a proposition?”
“I can’t discuss it over the phone, Mr. Charles, but if you will give me half an hour of your time, I can promise—”
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m pretty busy and—”
“But, Mr. Charles, this is—” Then there was a loud noise: it could have been a shot or something falling or anything else that would make a loud noise. I said, “Hello,” a couple of times, got no answer, and hung up.
Nora had Dorothy over in front of a looking-glass soothing her with powder and rouge. I said, “A guy selling insurance,” and we went into the living-room for a drink. Some more people had come in. I spoke to them. Harrison Quinn left the sofa where he had been sitting with Margot Innes and said: “Now Ping-Pong.” Asta jumped up and punched me in the belly with her front feet. I shut off the radio and poured myself a cocktail. The man whose name I had not caught was saying: “Comes the revolution and we’ll all be lined up against the wall—first thing.” He seemed to think it was a good idea.
Quinn came over to refill his glass. He looked towards the bedroom door. “Where’d you find the little blonde?”
“Used to bounce it on my knee.”
“Which knee?” he asked. “Could I touch it?”
Nora and Dorothy came out of the bedroom. I saw an afternoon paper on the radio and picked it up. Headlines said:
JULIA WOLF ONCE RACKETEER’S GIRL;
ARTHUR NUNHEIM IDENTIFIES BODY;
WYNANT STILL MISSING
Nora, at my elbow, spoke in a low voice: “I asked her to have dinner with us. Be nice to the child”—Nora was twenty-six—“she’s all upset.”
“Whatever you say.” I turned around. Dorothy, across the room, was laughing at something Quinn was telling her. “But if you get mixed up in people’s troubles, don’t expect me to kiss you where you’re hurt.”
“I won’t. You’re a sweet old fool. Don’t read that here now.” She took the newspaper away from me and stuck it out of sight behind the radio.
CHAPTER 5
Nora could not sleep that night. She read Chaliapin’s memoirs until I began to doze and then woke me up by asking: “Are you asleep?” I said I was. She lit a cigarette for me, one for herself. “Don’t you ever think you’d like to go back to detecting once in a while just for the fun of it? You know, when something special comes up, like the Lindb—”
“Darling,” I said, “my guess is that Wynant killed her, and the police’ll catch him without my help. Anyway, it’s nothing in my life.”
“I didn’t mean just that, but—”
“But besides I haven’t the time: I’m too busy trying to see that you don’t lose any of the money I married you for.” I kissed her. “Don’t you think maybe a drink would help you to sleep?”
“No, thanks.”
“Maybe it would if I took one.” When I brought my Scotch and soda back to bed, she was frowning into space. I said: “She’s cute, but she’s cuckoo. She wouldn’t be his daughter if she wasn’t. You can’t tell how much of what she says is what she thinks and you can’t tell how much of what she thinks ever really happened. I like her, but I think you’re letting—”
“I’m not sure I like her,” Nora said thoughtfully, “she’s probably a little bastard, but if a quarter of what she told us is true, she’s in a tough spot.”
“There’s nothing I can do to help her.”
“She thinks you can.”
“And so do you, which shows that no matter what you think, you can always get somebody else to go along with you.”
Nora sighed. “I wish you were sober enough to talk to.” She leaned over to take a sip of my drink. “I’ll give you your Christmas present now if you’ll give me mine.”
I shook my head. “At breakfast.”
“But it’s Christmas now.”
“Breakfast.”
“Whatever you’re giving me,” she said, “I hope I don’t like it.”
“You’ll have to keep them anyway, because the man at the Aquarium said he positively wouldn’t take them back. He said they’d already bitten the tails off the—”
“It wouldn’t hurt you any to find out if you can help her, would it? She’s got so much confidence in you, Nicky.”
“Everybody trusts Greeks.”
“Please.”
“You just want to poke your nose into things that—”
“I meant to ask you: did his wife know the Wolf girl was his mistress?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t like her.”
“What’s the wife like?”
“I don’t know—a woman.”
“Good-looking?”
“Used to be very.”
“She old?”
“Forty, forty-two. Cut it out, Nora. You don’t want any part of it. Let the Charleses stick to the Charleses’ troubles and the Wynants stick to the Wynants’.”
She pouted. “Maybe that drink would help me.”
I got out of bed and mixed her a drink. As I brought it into the bedroom, the telephone began to ring. I looked at my watch on the table. It was nearly five o’clock.
Nora was talking into the telephone: “Hello.… Yes, speaking.” She looked sidewise at me. I shook my head no. “Yes.… Why, certainly.… Yes, certainly.” She put the telephone down and grinned at me.
“You’re wonderful,” I said. “Now what?”
“Dorothy’s coming up. I think she’s tight.”
“That’s great.” I picked up my bathrobe. “I was afraid I was going to have to go to sleep.”
She was bending over looking for her slippers. “Don’t be such an old fluff. You can sleep all day.” She found her slippers and stood up in them. “Is she really as afraid of her mother as she says?”
“If she’s got any sense. Mimi’s poison.”
Nora screwed up her dark eyes at me and asked slowly: “What are you holding out on me?”
“Oh, dear,” I said, “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to tell you. Dorothy is really my daughter. I didn’t know what I was doing, Nora. It was spring in Venice and I was so young and there was a moon over the—”
“Be funny. Don’t you want something to eat?”
“If you do. What do you want?”
“Raw chopped beef sandwich with a lot of onion and some coffee.”
Dorothy arrived while I was telephoning an all-night delicatessen. When I went into the living-room, she stood up with some difficulty and said: “I’m awfully sorry, Nick, to keep bothering you and Nora like this, but I can’t go home this way tonight. I can’t. I’m afraid to. I don’t know what’d happen to me, what I’d do. Please don’t make me.” She was very drunk. Asta sniffed at her ankles.
I said: “Sh-h-h. You’re all right here. Sit down. There’ll be some coffee in a little while. Where’d you get the snoutful?”
She sat down and shook her head stupidly. “I don’t know. I’ve been everywhere since I left you. I’ve been everywhere except home because I can’t go home this way. Look what I got.” She stood up again and took a battered automatic pistol out of her coat pocket. “Look at that.” She waved it at me while Asta, wagging her tail, jumped happily at it.
Nora made a noise with her breathing. The back of my neck was cold. I pushed the dog aside and took the pistol away from Dorothy. “What kind of clowning is this? Sit down.” I dropped the pistol into a bathrobe pocket and pushed Dorothy down in her chair.
“Don’t be mad at me, Nick,” she whined. “You can keep it. I don’t want to make a nuisance of myself.”
“Where’d you get it?” I asked.
“In a speakeasy on Tenth Avenue. I gave a man my bracelet—the one with the emeralds and diamonds—for it.”
“And then won it back from him in a crap game,” I said. “You’ve still got it on.”
She stared at her bracelet. “I thought I did.”
I looked at Nora and shook my head. Nora said: “Aw, don’t bully her, Nick. She’s—”
“He’s not bullying me, Nora, he’s really not,” Dorothy said quickly. “He’s—he’s the only person I got in the world to turn to.”
I remembered Nora had not touched her Scotch and soda, so I went into the bedroom and drank it. When I came back, Nora was sitting on the arm of Dorothy’s chair with an arm around the girl. Dorothy was sniffling; Nora was saying: “But Nick’s not mad, dear. He likes you.” She looked up at me. “You’re not mad, are you, Nicky?”
“No, I’m just hurt.” I sat on the sofa. “Where’d you get the gun, Dorothy?”
“From a man—I told you.”
“What man?”
“I told you—a man in a speakeasy.”
“And you gave him a bracelet for it.”
“I thought I did, but—look—I’ve still got my bracelet.”
“I noticed that.”
Nora patted the girl’s shoulder. “Of course you’ve still got your bracelet.”
I said: “When the boy comes with that coffee and stuff, I’m going to bribe him to stick around. I’m not going to stay alone with a couple of—”
Nora scowled at me, told the girl: “Don’t mind him. He’s been like that all night.”
The girl said: “He thinks I’m a silly little drunken fool.” Nora patted her shoulder some more.
I asked: “But what’d you want a gun for?”
Dorothy sat up straight and stared at me with wide drunken eyes. “Him,” she whispered excitedly, “if he bothered me. I was afraid because I was drunk. That’s what it was. And then I was afraid of that, too, so I came here.”
“You mean your father?” Nora asked, trying to keep excitement out of her voice.
The girl shook her head. “Clyde Wynant’s my father. My stepfather.” She leaned against Nora’s breast.
Nora said: “Oh,” in a tone of very complete understanding. Then she said, “You poor child,” and looked significantly at me.
I said: “Let’s all have a drink.”
“Not me.” Nora was scowling at me again. “And I don’t think Dorothy wants one.”
“Yes, she does. It’ll help her sleep.” I poured her a terrific dose of Scotch and saw that she drank it. It worked nicely: she was sound asleep by the time our coffee and sandwiches came.
Nora said: “Now you’re satisfied.”
“Now I’m satisfied. Shall we tuck her in before we eat?”
I carried her into the bedroom and helped Nora undress her. She had a beautiful little body. We went back to our food. I took the pistol out of my pocket and examined it. It had been kicked around a lot. There were two cartridges in it, one in the chamber, one in the magazine.
“What are you going to do with it?” Nora asked.
“Nothing till I find out if its the one Julia Wolf was killed with. It’s a .32.”
“But she said—”
“She got it in a speakeasy—from a man—for a bracelet. I heard her.”
Nora leaned over her sandwich at me. Her eyes were very shiny and almost black. “Do you suppose she got it from her stepfather?”
“I do,” I said, but I said it too earnestly.
Nora said: “You’re a Greek louse. But maybe she did; you don’t know. And you don’t believe her story.”
“Listen, darling, tomorrow I’ll buy you a whole lot of detective stories, but don’t worry your pretty little head over mysteries tonight. All she was trying to tell you was that she was afraid Jorgensen was waiting to try to make her when she got home and she was afraid she was drunk enough to give in.”
“But her mother!”
“This family’s a family. You can—”
Dorothy Wynant, standing unsteadily in the doorway in a nightgown much too long for her, blinked at the light and said: “Please, can I come in for a little while? I’m afraid in there alone.”
“Sure.” She came over and curled up beside me on the sofa while Nora went to get something to put around her.
CHAPTER 6
The three of us were at breakfast early that afternoon when the Jorgensens arrived. Nora answered the telephone and came away from it trying to pretend she was not tickled. “It’s your mother,” she told Dorothy. “She’s downstairs. I told her to come up.”
Dorothy said: “Damn it. I wish I hadn’t phoned her.”
I said: “We might just as well be living in the lobby.”
Nora said: “He doesn’t mean that.” She patted Dorothy’s shoulder.
The doorbell rang. I went to the door. Eight years had done no damage to Mimi’s looks. She was a little riper, showier, that was all. She was larger than her daughter, and her blondness was more vivid. She laughed and held her hands out to me. “Merry Christmas. It’s awfully good to see you after all these years. This is my husband. Mr. Charles, Chris.”
I said, “I’m glad to see you, Mimi,” and shook hands with Jorgensen. He was probably five years younger than his wife, a tall thin erect dark man, carefully dressed and sleek, with smooth hair and a waxed mustache.
He bowed from the waist. “How do you do, Mr. Charles?” His accent was heavy, Teutonic, his hand was lean and muscular. We went inside.
Mimi, when the introductions were over, apologized to Nora for popping in on us. “But I did want to see your husband again, and then I know the only way to get this brat of mine anywhere on time is to carry her off bodily.” She turned her smile on Dorothy. “Better get dressed, honey.”
Honey grumbled through a mouthful of toast that she didn’t see why she had to waste another afternoon at Aunt Alice’s even if it was Christmas. “I bet Gilbert’s not going.”
Mimi said Asta was a lovely dog and asked me if I had any idea where that ex-husband of hers might be.
“No.” She went on playing with the dog. “He’s crazy, absolutely crazy, to disappear at a time like this. No wonder the police at first thought he had something to do with it.”
“What do they think now?” I asked.
She looked up at me. “Haven’t you seen the papers?”
“No.”
“It’s a man named Morelli—a gangster. He killed her. He was her lover.”
“They caught him?”
“Not yet, but he did it. I wish I could find Clyde. Macaulay won’t help me at all. He says he doesn’t know where he is, but that’s ridiculous. He has powers of attorney from him and everything and I know very well he’s in touch with Clyde. Do you think Macaulay’s trustworthy?”
“He’s Wynant’s lawyer,” I said. “There’s no reason why you should trust him.”
“Just what I thought.” She moved over a little on the sofa. “Sit down. I’ve got millions of things to ask you.”
“How about a drink first?”
“Anything but egg-nog,” she said. “It makes me bilious.”
When I came out of the pantry, Nora and Jorgensen were trying their French on each other, Dorothy was still pretending to eat, and Mimi was playing with the dog again. I distributed the drinks and sat down beside Mimi. She said: “Your wife’s lovely.”
“I like her.”
“Tell me the truth, Nick: do you think Clyde’s really crazy? I mean crazy enough that something ought to be done about it.”
“How do I know?”
“I’m worried about the children,” she said. “I’ve no claim on him any more—the settlement he made when I divorced him took care of all that—but the children have. We’re absolutely penniless now and I’m worried about them. If he is crazy he’s just as likely as not to throw away everything and leave them without a cent. What do you think I ought to do?”
