Bury Me Deep, page 17
Cassini looked at her with a face that was wishing it was somewhere else.
“Who is he?” she demanded.
Cassini’s long, thin fingers fluttered expressively. He managed finally to say, “He—he’s a lawyer. His name is Jordan—Scott Jordan.”
It was like having a pitched ball go through your fingers and belt you in the face. She reeled back. Her face went gray and angular. You might think I’d been introduced as Count Dracula. She looked at me in a hypnotized way and whispered, “Jordan!” and closed her eyes as if she was going to faint.
“Listen, Muriel,” I said quickly and earnestly, “you were Verna’s friend and she was killed in my apartment and I know how you must feel. You’ve been hearing a lot of nonsense. I had nothing to do with her death. Clear that out of your mind. It’s not true. I don’t know who killed her, but I want to find the man who did. I think you can help me.”
Her eyes opened slowly. Her voice was barely audible. “What do you want?”
“Information, Muriel. You were the only friend she had. Girls confide in each other. We’re up against a blank wall because we know so little about Verna. Anything, any little shred of information may turn the page for us. I need your help.”
She trembled. Verna’s death had scared her. She didn’t know what to do. Her eyes turned to Cassini for advice. He ducked his head at her with a jerky motion.
“It’s all right, Muriel. You can talk to Jordan.” He had been edging toward the door and now his hand was on the knob.
“When will I see you?” she asked plaintively.
“Soon.” he said hurriedly. “I will call.”
The door opened and closed and he was gone. I gave Muriel a calm and reassuring smile and shook out a couple of cigarettes and gave her one. I held a match for her. She filled her lungs with smoke and let it leak out in twin streams from her nostrils. She sat down. Some of the color seeped back into her face.
I decided not to question her about Cassini. But their presence together was a new and confusing wrinkle. Steve Janeiro and Verna Ford. Cassini and Muriel Evans. The frayed strands of a lot of lives were being spun together. I said, “You were pretty close to Verna, weren’t you?”
She nodded. “Yes. I was her best friend, at least until two weeks ago when she seemed to change.”
“Change? In what way?”
Her mouth pulled down. “It’s hard to explain. Verna seemed to draw inside herself, like she had a secret and wanted to be alone with it. Then there was the money. I don’t know where she got it, but there seemed to be quite a lot. She went on buying sprees and bought all new clothes.”
“Where did this money come from?”
“I wish I knew.” Muriel gave me a smile that was mostly on one side of her face. “Money was an obsession with Verna, almost a madness. She never had much as a kid. She came from a very poor family that lived in Hell’s Kitchen and she used to talk about money a lot. She was always saying that someday she’d have more than she could spend.” The tip of her cigarette glowed red as she inhaled. “I guess there was nothing Verna wouldn’t have done for money—nothing.”
I tapped some ash into a tray. “Was Verna a good dancer?”
“Oh, yes. Really good. That job at the Magic Lamp was the first real break she ever got. She used to haunt the night clubs in her spare time, trying to show them what she could do.” Her lips curved. “Verna figured a night club was the best place to hook a guy with big dough. Irene was plenty sore when she quit. She used to bring a lot of business to the studio.”
I nodded. Somebody was cooking corned beef and cabbage and the smell sifted heavily through the building. “How about her boy friends?”
She shrugged. “They came and went. Men always chased after Verna. But she could handle them.” A small frown wrinkled her forehead. She said thoughtfully, “There was one guy towards the end that she seemed to like more than the others.”
I sat up. “Can you describe him?”
She screwed up her eyes, trying to remember. “He was big, sort of athletic-looking. He always came and took her away in a taxi. I met them once on the stairs, but Verna didn’t introduce us.” She gave me the one-sided smile again. “That’s how I know she liked him.”
The description didn’t mean anything. There are a lot of big athletic-looking guys around the city.
“How about Frank Walther?”
“Walther!” she snorted. “Verna was just playing him for a sucker. He always had a lot of cash when his ship docked, back pay, but Verna managed to run through it fast enough. He’d buy her anything she wanted. He was nuts about her.”
“Just the playmate for a lonely sailor,” I said. “Tell me, whose car was she driving the night that Cadillac cracked up?”
“Ours. We bought it together, secondhand, and took turns using it.”
“Did she ever talk about the Pernot case?”
Muriel shook her head. “Verna was very cagey about that. When I’d ask her about it all I’d get would be a kind of funny smile. She hinted once that it was the big break she was waiting for.”
“How about Steve Janeiro?”
“Who?”
“Janeiro. A big, ugly brute who worked for her boss at the Magic Lamp. He says they used to be sweeties.”
“Never heard of him,” she said firmly.
I stood up and turned towards the window. “But it could happen without your knowing about it.”
“Yes, I guess so, only—” Her voice chopped off. She gasped sharply and came to her feet. I stared at her. Her slim body was rigid as a golf stick. She stood there, jabbing a finger at me, as motionless as a bird transfixed in mid-flight. Her mouth began to form soundless words.
I goggled at her. “What is it?” I asked sharply.
Her face was as brittle as glass. I saw the dark roots at the base of her platinum hair and I saw the muscles twitching in her throat. She was on the verge of tossing a wingding. I opened my hand and walloped her across the face.
It left a red welt that slowly faded. Her eyes blinked and she made a sobbing noise. But the tension had snapped. I took hold of her shoulders.
“What is it, Muriel? What’s wrong?”
“That’s him!” she said in a strained whisper. “That’s the man!” She was pointing at the folded newspaper in my pocket.
I picked it out. “What man?”
“The picture,” she breathed. “He’s the man I saw with Verna.”
I looked at it. Under the caption MURDERED BROKER was Bob Cambreau’s face.
I got an idea then what it must feel like to fall through a hole in the ice. “Are you sure?” I asked harshly.
“Yes. That’s him all right.” Her eyes met mine, white ringed. “And now he’s been killed too.”
It didn’t make sense. Bob Cambreau and Verna Ford. Or did it? He’d been seeing her. Going out together. Had come here to her apartment. And all the time he’d never breathed a word about it—not a whisper.
I looked at her hard. “You mean to say you never recognized his picture before?”
She shook her head. “I never look at the papers. They make me nervous since Verna went over the edge.”
“Don’t the girls at the studio ever talk about it?”
“No. Irene doesn’t like us to mention the case.”
I stood there, trying to whip some order into the chaos. It was no use. It needed a quiet simmering. Right now my brain was turning over like a revved-up engine. I ground out my cigarette and let Muriel get composed again. I asked some more questions but she was dry. I thanked her and went down to the street.
It was colder in Queens. The streets were noisy. A gang of kids were playing stick ball and insulting each other. I got out my wallet and looked at the pawn ticket I had taken from Verna’s bureau. A cab rolled along and I waved him down.
Three golden balls glittered in the afternoon sun. The pawnshop’s windows were cluttered with everything from a pearl-handled lorgnette to a pair of brass knuckles. I went inside. Opening the door had touched off a bell and a man emerged from the shadows in the rear and pulled a light cord. A butter-colored, twenty-watt lamp glowed overhead. He sidled behind the cashier’s cage, peering out through the grille at me from shrewd, calculating eyes. He was a leathery little item with a slipping dental plate that he kept clicking back into place with his tongue.
“Good day, sir,” he said.
“Is it?” I asked. “How can you tell from here?”
He chuckled. He didn’t think it was funny, but he chuckled anyway. “What can I do for you, sir?”
I placed the pawn ticket on the ledge in front of him. He clipped a pair of glasses to his nose, smiling, and examined the ticket. The smile ran away like a mouse through a hole. His mouth pulled down at the corners. He looked up flatly. “You are not the lady who pledged this item.”
“Obviously. However, I am the man who is going to redeem it.”
“Why doesn’t the lady come herself?”
“Because she sent me.”
He put the tips of his fingers together and studied me with infinite care. “You know what this item is?”
“The skeleton of Alexander the Great,” I said impatiently. “Come now, haul it out.”
His face fell. “You have the money?” He seemed a little bitter.
“Right here.” I tapped my breast pocket.
“Cash?”
“Cash, traveler’s checks and banker’s notes. I like to go well-heeled.” His caginess was beginning to pique my curiosity.
“Two hundred dollars?”
“Easy,” I assured him. “Don’t worry. Let’s get on with our business.”
He shrugged, turned, and kneeled down at a squat, black safe, twisted the dial, swung open a heavy door, rummaged inside, and came up with a yellow envelope. He slit it open and reached in and with great reverence picked out a diamond clasp. The light in the store was dim, but the clasp glittered brilliantly. The pawnbroker shook his head and gave me a slow, sad smile.
“Ach! Such a lovely piece!” He sighed from his stomach. “Small but neat—fifteen baguette diamonds, set in platinum and silver, with rubies and emeralds, only chips maybe, but such workmanship. In a store like Lantier’s you would pay ten thousand if you would pay a nickel for such a bauble.”
He fingered it caressingly. “It made me feel like Morgan just to have it in the store.”
I took a blank check out of my wallet and unscrewed a fountain pen.
His hand jumped out at me. “No,” he squeaked. “Nothing doing. No checks.”
I looked at him. “What’s wrong? Do I look like a crook?”
He shrugged enormously. “Who can tell crooks from honest men these days? Only last week a fine-looking gent, a man who looked like a Supreme Court judge, gave me a check which it bounced so hard it cracked the showcase. Please, my friend, you said cash—make it cash.”
I filled in the check and waved it. “You haven’t any choice,” I said. “Take it or leave it. The check or the cops.”
He argued vehemently, but he knew he was waging a losing battle. The deal was finally consummated when I identified myself. But he lingered reluctantly.
“How do I know you have a right to the clasp?” He looked at me with his eyes hooded. “You see, I know what happened to the girl. I read it in the papers and remembered her name.”
I said, “She did not come by the pin honestly. I represent the true owners. I’m willing to redeem it just to save time. If you prefer you can turn it over to the police. But you’ll lose two hundred dollars.”
“Two hundred dollars I don’t want to lose,” he said with conviction.
The check and the clasp changed hands.
“Why did the girl take such a small sum?” I asked.
He lifted his palms. “All she wanted I think was to keep the pin in my safe.”
It sounded plausible. I left him with his sorrow and repaired immediately to Lantier’s on Fifth Avenue, a very grave establishment with the somber atmosphere of a funeral chapel. The manager recognized the pin at once.
“Why, yes,” he said promptly. “We designed that pin for Miss Karen Pernot. It was a gift from her uncle. He was one of our most esteemed customers.”
“How long ago?”
“About a year, I’d judge. I can look it up in the records, if you’d care to wait.”
“That’s all right. Thank you very much.”
The street was brisk and clear. The same certainly did not apply to my skull.
CHAPTER 22
I WANDERED up Fifth Avenue, hardly noticing the sleek tide of women that drifted past me with their acquisitive eyes devouring the opulent window displays. Atlas, with the weight of the world on his shoulders, had nothing on me. On Seventy-fifth Street I cut east, crossed the street, and climbed the stairs.
The same mule-faced maid in the same black alpaca dress admitted me and led me into the same semicircular room and put me into the big box-shaped sofa. Miss Pernot, she said, would join me in a moment. Before the ponderous red drapes had a chance to settle behind her, they broke open again and Rudolf Cassini stepped into the room.
His dark face still looked unhappy. He covered half the distance towards me, blinked uncertainly, licked his lips, and said, “I—I’d like a word with you, Jordan.”
“Fire away,” I said.
“Would you do me a favor?”
I shrugged. “Perhaps.”
“It—it’s about Muriel Evans,” he said earnestly. “I wouldn’t want Karen to know that you saw me…” He made a vague, helpless gesture. “Karen is a very jealous girl.”
“Is she?”
He sent a quick, nervous glance over his shoulder. “Yes. Would you promise not to mention anything about—”
I said, “Listen, Cassini, I’ll promise this much: if it doesn’t interfere with anything I’m trying to do, you have nothing to worry about.”
His eyes brightened.
“On one condition,” I added.
“Anything,” he said promptly.
“I want to know what you were doing in Muriel Evans’s apartment, and how you got to know her.”
He lowered his eyes a bit sheepishly, or as sheepishly as a guy like Cassini can look. He said; “After Karen’s uncle died and Verna Ford came forward with her story, I tried to do a little investigating of my own. I went to the dance studio where she used to work and there I met Muriel. We got—” he shrugged expressively—“well, we got friendly.”
“That sounds logical,” I said.
He was still in the process of thanking me when Karen Pernot floated in. Her compact body wore a royal-blue hostess gown and her cameo face wore a cordial smile. “What a pleasant surprise,” she said. Her eyes found Cassini. “Rudy, darling, we have some business to discuss. Come back this evening. And please tell Clara to bring us some bourbon.”
When all that had been attended to, she joined me on the sofa. She sat so close you couldn’t have squeezed the queen of spades between us. Her mouth was serious and her dark eyes concerned.
“I was horrified when I read about that dreadful shooting in your office. I tried to reach you, but you’re never in.” Her fingers curled around my arm. “You’re pretty valuable to me, Scott—I may call you Scott, mayn’t I?”
“You may.”
“Promise me you’ll be careful.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“Good.” She smiled as if the world had suddenly become a much finer place to live in. “How are things coming?”
“Fair. We’re making a little progress, nothing sensational, but I’m hoping something big will crack at any moment.”
“Perhaps we ought to celebrate,” she said. “Tomorrow is my birthday.”
“Quite a coincidence,” I said. “I have a present for you.”
She pressed my arm lightly. “You’re psychic. I love presents. Let’s have a drink on it.”
She poured some bourbon into a pair of thin jiggers and we touched glasses. It was fine bourbon. The distiller hadn’t become impatient. It was smooth as a hummingbird’s wing. She turned to me with a shine in her eyes.
“I’m terribly excited. What is it?”
I took out my handkerchief and unfolded it in her lap. The diamond clasp glittered under the chandelier, sparking fire from a thousand different facets. She caught her breath. Her eyes were riveted tightly to it. They were dark and blank and a little frightened. Then she lifted her chin and laughed a high, tinkling laugh that seemed a full octave too high for her larynx.
“How wonderful!” she whispered. “Where did you get it?”
“From a pawnbroker.”
She blinked at me, the smile hanging on.
I said, “This pawnbroker got it from Verna Ford. The sixty-four dollar question is, where did Verna Ford get it?”
She had another drink, looking at me over the rim of the glass. She turned the clasp over in her fingers, then said brightly, “I’ll bet she got it from Eric Quimby.”
“Why do you say that?”
The words tumbled out. “It’s simple. You see, several months ago I broke the catch and Uncle Jim said he would have it fixed. He took it but he never returned it. Quimby must have found it in the house and given it to Verna.”
“Why would he do that?”
“As a bribe—to pay for her testimony.”
“Where would Uncle Jim be apt to take the clasp for repairs?”
“Lantier’s, I suppose. Does it make any difference?”
“Some,” I said. “I was there today and they never mentioned it. The catch seems to be all right now.”
Her cheeks flushed slowly. I looked at her sideways, as you’d look at a child suspected of fibbing.
“You think I’m lying,” she said. “Don’t you?”
“Uh-huh.”
She bit her lip. “Then why don’t you say so?”
“All right. You’re lying.”
She stood up quickly. Her eyes were dark. Exasperation was in her voice. “You’re the most distrustful man I ever met.”
“Why not?” I said grimly. “In the past few days everything has happened to me that can happen to a guy. I’ve been warned and threatened by notes, letters, and pictures of coffins. A strange girl was poisoned in my apartment. Cops have pulled me out of bed in the middle of the night. An assortment of guns have been pointed at me and a few of them fired. I’ve been dreaming about my own obituaries. Scott Jordan, died suddenly of lead poisoning. Omit flowers. I’ve been lied to and misled from hell to breakfast by everybody in the case. You’re my client. I’m trying to help you. How can I help you if you lie to me too? You’re the one person I want the truth from—now and always.”
