The Essential Noir Bundle, page 95
“No. You’re kind of interested in that shop of his.”
“Why not? He’s an inventor, the shop’s his place. I’d like to have a look at it some time.”
“Help yourself. Tell me some more about Morelli, and how you go about getting him to open up.”
“He likes to talk. Do you know a fellow called Sparrow? A big fat pale fellow with a pansy voice?”
Guild frowned. “No. Why?”
“He was there—with Miriam—and wanted to take a crack at me, but they wouldn’t let him.”
“And what’d he want to do that for?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because she told him I helped knock Nunheim off—helped you.”
Guild said: “Oh.” He scratched his chin with a thumbnail, looked at his watch. “It’s getting kind of late. Suppose you drop in and see me some time tomorrow—today.”
I said, “Sure,” instead of the things I was thinking, nodded at him and Andy, and went out to the living-room.
Nora was sleeping on the sofa. Mimi put down the book she was reading and asked: “Is the secret session over?”
“Yes.” I moved towards the sofa.
Mimi said: “Let her sleep awhile, Nick. You’re going to stay till after your police friends have gone, aren’t you?”
“All right. I want to see Dorothy again.”
“But she’s asleep.”
“That’s all right. I’ll wake her up.”
“But—” Guild and Andy came in, said their good-nights, Guild looked regretfully at the sleeping Nora, and they left.
Mimi sighed. “I’m tired of policemen,” she said. “You remember that story?”
“Yes.”
Gilbert came in. “Do they really think Chris did it?”
“No,” I said.
“Who do they think?”
“I could’ve told you yesterday. I can’t today.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Mimi protested. “They know very well and you know very well that Clyde did it.” When I said nothing she repeated, more sharply: “You know very well that Clyde did it.”
“He didn’t,” I said.
An expression of triumph brightened Mimi’s face. “You are working for him, now aren’t you?” My “No” bounced off her with no effect whatever.
Gilbert asked, not argumentatively, but as if he wanted to know: “Why couldn’t he?”
“He could’ve, but he didn’t. Would he have written those letters throwing suspicion on Mimi, the one person who’s helping him by hiding the chief evidence against him?”
“But maybe he didn’t know that. Maybe he thought the police were simply not telling all they knew. They often do that, don’t they? Or maybe he thought he could discredit her, so they wouldn’t believe her if—”
“That’s it,” Mimi said. “That’s exactly what he did, Nick.”
I said to Gilbert: “You don’t think he killed her.”
“No, I don’t think he did, but I’d like to know why you don’t think so—you know—your method.”
“And I’d like to know yours.”
His face flushed a little and there was some embarrassment in his smile. “Oh, but I—it’s different.”
“He knows who killed her,” Dorothy said from the doorway. She was still dressed. She stared at me fixedly, as if afraid to look at anybody else. Her face was pale and she held her small body stiffly erect.
Nora opened her eyes, pushed herself up on an elbow, and asked, “What?” sleepily. Nobody answered her.
Mimi said: “Now, Dorry, don’t let’s have one of those idiotic dramatic performances.”
Dorothy said: “You can beat me after they’ve gone. You will.” She said it without taking her eyes off mine. Mimi tried to look as if she did not know what her daughter was talking about.
“Who does he know killed her?” I asked.
Gilbert said: “You’re making an ass of yourself, Dorry, you’re—”
I interrupted him: “Let her. Let her say what she’s got to say. Who killed her, Dorothy?”
She looked at her brother and lowered her eyes and no longer held herself erect. Looking at the floor, she said indistinctly: “I don’t know. He knows.” She raised her eyes to mine and began to tremble. “Can’t you see I’m afraid?” she cried. “I’m afraid of them. Take me away and I’ll tell you, but I’m afraid of them.”
Mimi laughed at me. “You asked for it. It serves you right.”
Gilbert was blushing. “It’s so silly,” he mumbled.
I said: “Sure, I’ll take you away, but I’d like to have it out now while we’re all together.”
Dorothy shook her head. “I’m afraid.”
Mimi said: “I wish you wouldn’t baby her so, Nick. It only makes her worse. She—”
I asked Nora: “What do you say?”
She stood up and stretched without lifting her arms. Her face was pink and lovely as it always is when she has been sleeping. She smiled drowsily at me and said: “Let’s go home. I don’t like these people. Come on, get your hat and coat, Dorothy.”
Mimi said to Dorothy: “Go to bed.”
Dorothy put the tips of the fingers of her left hand to her mouth and whimpered through them: “Don’t let her beat me, Nick.” I was watching Mimi, whose face wore a placid half-smile, but her nostrils moved with her breathing and I could hear her breathing.
Nora went around to Dorothy. “Come on, we’ll wash your face and—” Mimi made an animal noise in her throat, muscles thickened on the back of her neck, and she put her weight on the balls of her feet.
Nora stepped between Mimi and Dorothy. I caught Mimi by a shoulder as she started forward, put my other arm around her waist from behind, and lifted her off her feet. She screamed and hit back at me with her fists and her hard sharp high heels made dents in my shins.
Nora pushed Dorothy out of the room and stood in the doorway watching us. Her face was very live. I saw it clearly, sharply: everything else was blurred. When clumsy, ineffectual blows on my back and shoulder brought me around to find Gilbert pommeling me, I could see him but dimly and I hardly felt the contact when I shoved him aside. “Cut it out. I don’t want to hurt you, Gilbert.” I carried Mimi over to the sofa and dumped her on her back on it, sat on her knees, got a wrist in each hand.
Gilbert was at me again. I tried to pop his kneecap, but kicked him too low, kicked his leg from under him. He went down on the floor in a tangle. I kicked at him again, missed, and said: “We can fight afterwards. Get some water.”
Mimi’s face was becoming purple. Her eyes protruded, glassy, senseless, enormous. Saliva bubbled and hissed between clenched teeth with her breathing, and her red throat—her whole body—was a squirming mass of veins and muscles swollen until it seemed they must burst. Her wrists were hot in my hands and sweat made them hard to hold. Nora beside me with a glass of water was a welcome sight. “Chuck it in her face,” I said.
Nora chucked it. Mimi separated her teeth to gasp and she shut her eyes. She moved her head violently from side to side, but there was less violence in the squirming of her body. “Do it again,” I said. The second glass of water brought a spluttering protest from Mimi and the fight went out of her body. She lay still, limp, panting.
I took my hands away from her wrists and stood up. Gilbert, standing on one foot, was leaning against a table nursing the leg I kicked. Dorothy, big-eyed and pale, was in the doorway, undecided whether to come in or run off and hide. Nora, beside me, holding the empty glass in her hand, asked: “Think she’s all right?”
“Sure.”
Presently Mimi opened her eyes, tried to blink the water out of them. I put a handkerchief in her hand. She wiped her face, gave a long shivering sigh, and sat up on the sofa. She looked around the room, still blinking a little. When she saw me she smiled feebly. There was guilt in her smile, but nothing you could call remorse. She touched her hair with an unsteady hand and said: “I’ve certainly been drowned.”
I said: “Some day you’ve going into one of those things and not come out of it.”
She looked past me at her son. “Gil. What’s happened to you?” she asked.
He hastily took his hand off his leg and put his foot down on the floor. “I—uh—nothing,” he stammered. “I’m perfectly all right.” He smoothed his hair, straightened his necktie.
She began to laugh. “Oh, Gil, did your really try to protect me? And from Nick?” Her laughter increased. “It was awfully sweet of you, but awfully silly. Why, he’s a monster, Gil. Nobody could—” She put my handkerchief over her mouth and rocked back and forth.
I looked sidewise at Nora. Her mouth was set and her eyes were almost black with anger. I touched her arm. “Let’s blow. Give your mother a drink, Gilbert. She’ll be all right in a minute or two.”
Dorothy, hat and coat in her hands, tiptoed to the outer door. Nora and I found our hats and coats and followed her out, leaving Mimi laughing into my handkerchief on the sofa. None of the three of us had much to say in the taxicab that carried us over to the Normandie. Nora was brooding, Dorothy seemed still pretty frightened, and I was tired—it had been a full day.
It was nearly five o’clock when we got home. Asta greeted us boisterously. I lay down on the floor to play with her while Nora went into the pantry to make coffee. Dorothy wanted to tell me something that happened to her when she was a little child. I said: “No. You tried that Monday. What is it? a gag? It’s late. What was it you were afraid to tell me over there?”
“But you’d understand better if you’d let me—”
“You said that Monday. I’m not a psychoanalyst. I don’t know anything about early influences. I don’t give a damn about them. And I’m tired—I been ironing all day.”
She pouted at me. “You seem to be trying to make it as hard for me as you can.”
“Listen, Dorothy,” I said, “you either know something you were afraid to say in front of Mimi and Gilbert or you don’t. If you do, spit it out. I’ll ask you about any of it I find myself not understanding.”
She twisted a fold of her skirt and looked sulkily at it, but when she raised her eyes they became bright and excited. She spoke in a whisper loud enough for anybody in the room to hear: “Gil’s been seeing my father and he saw him today and my father told him who killed Miss Wolf.”
“Who?”
She shook her head. “He wouldn’t tell me. He’d just tell me that.”
“And that’s what you were afraid to say in front of Gil and Mimi?”
“Yes. You’d understand that if you’d let me tell you—”
“Something that happened when you were a little child. Well, I won’t. Stop it. What else did he tell you?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing about Nunheim?”
“No, nothing.”
“Where is your father?”
“Gil didn’t tell me.”
“When did he meet him?”
“He didn’t tell me. Please don’t be mad, Nick. I’ve told you everything he told me.”
“And a fat lot it is,” I growled. “When’d he tell you this?”
“Tonight. He was telling me when you came in my room, and, honest, that’s all he told me.”
I said: “It’d be swell if just once one of you people would make a clear and complete statement about something—it wouldn’t matter what.”
Nora came in with the coffee. “What’s worrying you now, son?” she asked.
“Things,” I said, “riddles, lies, and I’m too old and too tired for them to be any fun. Let’s go back to San Francisco.”
“Before New Year’s?”
“Tomorrow, today.”
“I’m willing.” She gave me a cup. “We can fly back, if you want, and be there for New Year’s Eve.”
Dorothy said tremulously: “I didn’t lie to you, Nick. I told you everything I—Please, please don’t be mad with me. I’m so—” She stopped talking to sob. I rubbed Asta’s head and groaned.
Nora said: “We’re all worn out and jumpy. Let’s send the pup downstairs for the night and turn in and do our talking after we’ve had some rest. Come on, Dorothy, I’ll bring your coffee into the bedroom and give you some night-clothes.”
Dorothy got up, said, “Good-night,” to me, “I’m sorry I’m so silly,” and followed Nora out.
When Nora returned she sat down on the floor beside me. “Our Dorry does her share of weeping and whining,” she said. “Admitting life’s not too pleasant for her just now, still …” She yawned. “What was her fearsome secret?”
I told her what Dorothy had told me. “It sounds like a lot of hooey.”
“Why?”
“Why not? Everything else we’ve got from them has been hooey.”
Nora yawned again. “That may be good enough for a detective, but it’s not convincing enough for me. Listen, why don’t we make a list of all the suspects and all the motives and clues, and check them off against—”
“You do it. I’m going to bed. What’s a clue, Mamma?”
“It’s like when Gilbert tiptoed over to the phone tonight when I was alone in the living-room, and he thought I was asleep, and told the operator not to put through any incoming calls until morning.”
“Well, well.”
“And,” she said, “it’s like Dorothy discovering that she had Aunt Alice’s key all the time.”
“Well, well.”
“And it’s like Studsy nudging Morelli under the table when he started to tell you about the drunken cousin of—what was it?—Dick O’Brien’s that Julia Wolf knew.”
I got up and put our cups on a table. “I don’t see how any detective can hope to get along without being married to you, but, just the same, you’re overdoing it. Studsy nudging Morelli is my idea of something to spend a lot of time not worrying about. I’d rather worry about whether they pushed Sparrow around to keep me from being hurt or to keep me from being told something. I’m sleepy.”
“So am I. Tell me something, Nick. Tell me the truth: when you were wrestling with Mimi, didn’t you get excited?”
“Oh, a little.”
She laughed and got up from the floor. “If you aren’t a disgusting old lecher,” she said. “Look, it’s daylight.”
CHAPTER 26
Nora shook me awake at quarter past ten. “The telephone,” she said. “It’s Herbert Macaulay and he says it’s important.”
I went into the bedroom—I had slept in the living-room—to the telephone. Dorothy was sleeping soundly. I mumbled, “Hello,” into the telephone.
Macaulay said: “It’s too early for that lunch, but I’ve got to see you right away. Can I come up now?”
“Sure. Come up for breakfast.”
“I’ve had it. Get yours and I’ll be up in fifteen minutes.”
“Right.”
Dorothy opened her eyes less than halfway, said, “It must be late,” sleepily, turned over, and returned to unconsciousness.
I put cold water on my face and hands, brushed my teeth and hair, and went back to the living-room. “He’s coming up,” I told Nora. “He’s had breakfast, but you’d better order some coffee for him. I want chicken livers.”
“Am I invited to your party or do I—”
“Sure. You’ve never met Macaulay, have you? He’s a pretty good guy. I was attached to his outfit for a few days once, up around Vaux, and we looked each other up after the war. He threw a couple of jobs my way, including the Wynant one. How about a drop of something to cut the phlegm?”
“Why don’t you stay sober today?”
“We didn’t come to New York to stay sober. Want to see a hockey game tonight?”
“I’d like to.” She poured me a drink and went to order breakfast.
I looked through the morning papers. They had the news of Jorgensen’s being picked up by the Boston police and of Nunheim’s murder, but further developments of what the tabloids called “The Hell’s Kitchen Gang War,” the arrest of “Prince Mike” Gerguson, and an interview with the “Jafsie” of the Lindbergh kidnapping negotiations got more space. Macaulay and the bellboy who brought Asta up arrived together. Asta liked Macaulay because when he patted her he gave her something to set her weight against: she was never very fond of gentleness.
He had lines around his mouth this morning and some of the rosiness was gone from his cheeks. “Where’d the police get this new line?” he asked. “Do you think—” He broke off as Nora came in. She had dressed.
“Nora, this is Herbert Macaulay,” I said. “My wife.”
They shook hands and Nora said: “Nick would only let me order some coffee for you. Can’t I—”
“No, thanks, I’ve just finished breakfast.”
I said: “Now what’s this about the police?” He hesitated.
“Nora knows practically everything I know,” I assured him, “so unless it’s something you’d rather not—”
“No, no, nothing like that,” he said. “It’s—well—for Mrs. Charles’s sake. I don’t want to cause her anxiety.”
“Then out with it. She only worries about things she doesn’t know. What’s the new police line?”
“Lieutenant Guild came to see me this morning,” he said. “First he showed me a piece of watch-chain with a knife attached to it and asked me if I’d ever seen them before. I had: they were Wynant’s. I told him I thought I had: I thought they looked like Wynant’s. Then he asked me if I knew of any way in which they could have come into anybody else’s possession and, after some beating about the bush, I discovered that by anybody else he meant you or Mimi. I told him certainly—Wynant could have given them to either of you, you could have stolen them or found them on the street or have been given them by somebody who stole them or found them on the street, or you could have got them from somebody Wynant gave them to. There were other ways, too, for you to have got them, I told him, but he knew I was kidding him, so he wouldn’t let me tell him about them.”
There were spots of color in Nora’s cheeks and her eyes were dark. “The idiot!”
“Now, now,” I said. “Maybe I should have warned you—he was heading in that direction last night. I think it’s likely my old pal Mimi gave him a prod or two. What else did he turn the searchlight on?”
