James Chase - Lay Her Among the Lilies

Yes, he had heard of Universal Services.

“I run it,” I said. “It is important to me to talk to you about the Crosbys.”

“I don’t think I have any right to discuss my last employer with you,” he said distantly.

“I’m sorry.”

“It won’t hurt you to hear what I have to say. After I have explained the position you may feel inclined to tell me what I want to know. If you don’t there’re no bones broken.”

The pause was longer this time.

“Well, I might meet you, but I can’t promise…”

“That’s all right, Mr. Stevens. At the corner of Jefferson and Felman there’s a cafe. We might meet there. What time would suit you?”

He said he would be there at nine.

“I’ll be the guy wearing a hat and reading the Evening Herald,” I told him.

He said he would look out for me and hung up.

I had nearly two hours to wait before I met him, and decided to pass the time at Finnegan’s. It took me a few minutes to lock up the office. While I was turning keys, closing the safe, and shutting the windows, I thought about Nurse Gurney. Who had kidnapped her? Why had she been kidnapped? Was she still alive? Thoughts that got me nowhere, but worried me. Still thinking, I went into the outer office, looked around to make sure the place was bedded down for the night, crossed the room, stepped into the passage and locked the outer door behind me.

At the end of the corridor I noticed a short, stockily-built man lolling against the wall by the elevator doors, and reading a newspaper. He didn’t look up as I paused near him to thumb the bell-push calling the elevator attendant. I gave him a casual glance. He was dark skinned, and his blunt-featured face was pock-marked. He looked like an Italian; could have been Spanish. His navy-blue serge suit was shiny at the elbows and his white shirt dirty at the cuffs.

The elevator attendant threw open the doors, and the Wop and I entered. On the third floor, the elevator paused to pick up Manfred Willet who stared through me with blank eyes and then interested himself in the headlines of the evening paper. He had said he wanted secrecy, but I thought it was carrying it a little far not to know me in the elevator. Still, he was paying my fee, so he could call the tune.

I bought an Evening Herald at the bookstall, giving Willet a chance to leave the building without falling over me. I watched him drive away in an Oldsmobile the size of a dreadnought. The Wop with the dirty shirt cuffs had collapsed into one of the armchairs in the lobby and was reading his newspaper. I walked down the corridor to the back exit and across the alley to Finnegan’s bar.

The saloon was full of smoke, hard characters and loud voices. I had only taken a couple of steps towards my favourite table when Olaf Kruger, who runs a boxing academy on Princess Street, clutched hold of me.

Olaf was not much bigger than a jockey, bald as an egg and as smart as they come.

“Hello, Vic,” he said, shaking hands. “Come on over and get drunk. Haven’t seen you for weeks. What have I done?”

I pushed my way towards the bar and winked at Mike Finnegan as he toiled under the double row of neon lights, jerking beer.

“I’ve been to the fights pretty regular,” I said as Olaf climbed up on a stool, elbowing a little space for himself with threatening gestures that no one took seriously. “Just didn’t happen to see you. That boy O’Hara shapes well.”

Olaf waved tiny hands at Finnegan.

“Whiskies, Mike,” he bawled, in his shrill, piping voice. “O’Hara? Yeah, he shapes all right, but he’s a sucker for a cross counter. I keep telling him, but he don’t listen. One of these days he’s going to meet a guy with the wind behind him, and then it’s curtains.”

We talked boxing for the next half-hour. There was nothing much else Olaf could talk about. While we talked we ate our way through two club sandwiches apiece and drank three double whiskies.

Hughson, the Herald’s sports writer, joined us and insisted on buying another round of drinks. He was a tall, lean, cynical-looking bird, going bald, with liverish bags under his eyes, and tobacco ash spread over his coat front. He was never without a cigar that smelt as if he had found it a couple of years ago in a garbage can. Probably he had.

After we had listened to three or four of his long-winded, dirty stories, Olaf said, “What was that yarn about the Dixie Kid getting into a shindig last night? Anything to it?”

Hughson pulled a face.

“I don’t know. The Kid won’t talk. He had a shiner, if that means anything. One of the taxi-drivers on the pier said he swam ashore.”

“If he was thrown off the Dream Ship, that’s quite a swim,” Olaf said, and grinned.

“You two guys talk to yourselves,” I said, lighting a cigarette. “Don’t mind me.”

Hughson hooked nicotine-stained fingers into my breast pocket.

“The Dixie Kid went out to the Dream Ship last night and got into an argument with Sherrill. Four bouncers are supposed to have tossed him overboard, but not before he’s supposed to have socked Sherrill. There’s a rumour Sherrill’s going to bring an assault charge. If he does, the Kid’s washed up. He’s over his ears in debt now.”

“It’s my guess Sherrill will bring a suit,” Olaf said, shaking his bald head. “He has a mean reputation for that kind of thing.”

“He won’t,” Hughson said. “He can’t afford the publicity. I told the Kid he was safe enough, but even at that, the little rat won’t talk.”

“Who’s Sherrill, anyway?” I asked as calmly as I could, and crooked a finger at Finnegan to refill the glasses.

“You’re not the only one who’s asking that,” Hughson told me. “No one knows. He’s a mystery man. Came to Orchid City about a couple of years ago. He took a job selling real estate on commission for Selby & Lowenstein’s. I believe he made a little money; not much, but enough to buy himself a small house on Rossmore Avenue. Then, somehow or other, he got himself engaged to Janet Crosby, the millionairess, but that didn’t last long. He dropped out of sight for about six months, and then suddenly reappeared as owner of the Dream Ship: a three-hundred ton schooner he’s converted into a gambling-den which he keeps anchored just outside the three-mile limit. He has a fleet of water taxis going to and fro, and the members of the club are as exclusive as an investiture at Buckingham Palace.”

“And gambling’s not the only vice that goes on in that ship.” Olaf said, and winked. “He’s got half a dozen hand-picked girls on board. It’s a sweet racket. Being three miles outside the city’s limit, he can thumb his nose at Brandon. I bet he makes a pile of jack.”

“What foxes me,” Hughson said, reaching for the whisky I had bought him, “is how a heel like Sherrill ever found enough money to buy a goddamn great schooner like the Dream Ship.”

“They say he floated a company,” Olaf said. “If he had come to me and offered to sell me a piece of that ship, I’d have jumped at it. I bet whoever owns shares in her makes a packet, too.”

I listened, thinking what a marvellous thing it was to meet two guys in a bar and hear the very thing I wanted to hear without even asking.

“That ship sounds fun,” I said casually. “I wouldn’t mind being a member.”

Hughson sneered.

“And you’re not the only one. You haven’t a hope. Only guys in the White Book stand a chance. Every member is hand-picked. If you haven’t got dough Sherrill doesn’t want you. The entrance fee is two hundred and fifty dollars, and the sub works out at five hundred a year. He caters for the big boys, not the proletariat.”

“What kind of a guy is Sherrill? “I asked.

“One of those smooth Alecs,” Hughson said. “Handsome, slick, tough and bright. The kind of heel women fall for. Curly hair, blue eyes, big muscles, and dresses like a movie star. My idea of a genuine, top-drawer, son-of-a-bitch.”