Stewart Sterling - Where There’s Smoke

“All I know is what I read in her press books. I’ve got those. I doubt if you’d find anything in them that Leila wouldn’t want the world to know about.”

“How far back do they go?”

“Since Lownes & Lownes were wowing ’em in the bush leagues.”

“I’d like to take a crack at them. Where are they?”

“My house.”

“How’s about running up there with me?”

“My God!” Gaydel looked at the wrist watch Leila had presented to him. “I’ve a million things to do between now and six. I’ll call up my wife and ask her to show you the clippings. Won’t that do?”

Pedley said it probably would.

The Van Doorn Arms looked down upon the sparkling blue of the Hudson and the oily swirls of Spuyten Duyvil; on a clear day you could see most of Manhattan from the Gaydel apartment. The rooms were like the view, big and pleasant.

Mrs. Chuck was a good-looking woman with henna-dyed hair and a figure that implied dieting. She wouldn’t be any competition to Leila in a bathing suit, but she was agreeably wholesome and probably a straight-shooter. Pedley liked her.

She was even more distressed than her husband had appeared to be.

“I’m half out of my wits, Mister Marshall—”

“Pedley.”

“Of course. Mister Pedley. You’ll have to excuse me, I’m so gidgety about Chuck. If he keeps on having insomnia about the show the way he has—”

“Keeps him on edge, hah?”

“He’s been lying awake half the night. Getting up, prowling in the icebox, playing solitaire — to get so he can take as much as a cat nap.”

“This been going on for some time?”

“Well—” She hesitated. “It’s been worse the last couple of weeks. He’s so sensitive to people’s reactions. It upsets him when things don’t go along, smoothly.” She brought out three large imitation-leather books. “These are the clippings. You aren’t going through all of them—”

“I’ll browse around in ’em for a while, if you don’t mind.”

“Make yourself at home.”

He had just located the press book for the year 1939 when a vision in pink and chocolate wafted into the room. She was about five — very bright and alert. The pink was a corduroy jumper-dress; the chocolate, around her mouth.

“I’m Gwenny,” she announced.

“Hello, Gwenny.”

“My whole name’s Gwendolyn Elizabeth Gaydel but they call me Gwenny for short. I’m five. How old are you?”

“Ninety, going on ninety-one, way I feel, Gwenny.” He skipped around in the yellowed Manila pages—

Lownes Clicko at Bijou. — Dancesong Duo Held Over Another Week. — Looker Can Warble Too. Norfolk, Canton, Steubenville papers. Mostly good notices. A few N. S. G. Fifty-fifty Act, read one excerpt from a Trenton sheet. The Lownes team, brother and sister, got boos and applause in about equal proportions on their three-day stay here at the Academy. The down-thumbs were for Ned Lownes’s time-tested eccentric steps; the clap-hands for Leila’s blue-cooing. The routine of this pair could stand some brushing up.

“What you looking for?” Gwendolyn put a sticky paw on the corner of the press book.

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be looking,” Pedley answered.

“My mother says you’re looking for people who set fires.”

“Did she say that?”

“I like to set fires, mister.”

“Well, that’s a habit lots of little boys and girls have, Gwenny. But it’s an awful bad habit.”

“Why?”

“It destroys things. Hurts people.” Pedley found a cutting from the Baltimore Sun:

The Lownes & Lownes twosome, new to these boards, received a rousing welcome here yesterday. Ned L. clever with his feet and Leila doesn’t have to be clever, with what she has to show the customers. The clipping had been marked with red crayon.

Baltimore, he said to himself. That rang a bell, didn’t it? Baltimore—

“My daddy says sometimes fires help people instead of hurting them.” Gwendolyn was practically in his lap, now.

“When did Daddy say that?”

“Last night. And he said that he wouldn’t blame Leila if she’d burned the old theater down—” she was breathless — “and killed that nasty old man.”

“I don’t expect Daddy meant it just that way, young lady.”

“Yes, he did, too. Because he said he knew all the time Leila was going to do it sometime and the sooner it was over the better. Do you know Leila?”

“Well,” Pedley said. “I thought I did.”

He took the Sim paper clipping with him.

Pedley phoned from a cigar-store booth on Two Hundred and Thirty-second Street.

“Mister Molloy? Good evening, Mister Molloy, have you had your nightly ptomaines yet?”

Barney said, “No, sir. I have not.”

“High time you corrected this state of affairs.”

“Yes, sir.”

Pedley hung up.

He drove down the West Side Express Highway without using his blinkers and he didn’t once run through a red. He crossed town at Canal, went south again, turned the ignition off around the corner from Park Row.

At the cashier’s desk in Ptomaine Pete’s he paused. “Top of the evening, Marshal.” The hollow-cheeked proprietor ducked his head in greeting.

“I’m not here, if anyone calls.”

“You’re not here.” Pete made it a statement.

“You haven’t seen me. I’m dead and I’m going to be buried in one of your back booths.”

Pete didn’t bat an eyelid. “I’ll liquidate anybody who says diff’rent.”

Pedley had finished his second cup of black coffee laced with bourbon before Barney limped down the long row of tables.

The fireman was pleased with himself, apparently, for he sang beneath his breath,

“Whose dish of cream have you been lapping up, Barnabus?”

“I’m derelict in my duty, boss.” Barney stood as straight as he could, considering his game leg, tugged at his bow tie, hiked his belt up over the paunch that was just beginning to make itself show. “I forget to bring you a highly important document.”

“Consider yourself bawled out.”

“The commish will be annoyed, I fear. ’Twas an order of temporary suspension, boss. Under Rule Twenty-Two of Department Regulations, such an order becomes effective when and as received. And there it is, a-laying on your desk. You ain’t received it.”

“Pity. Doesn’t appoint any acting marshal, does it?”

“Uh, uh. Under Civil Service, Chief of Department’s supposed to take over, isn’t he?”

“Yair. Hunneford would be nominally in charge tomorrow morning. Only he’s at that convention in Chicago.”

“You think maybe the commissioner thought of that?” Barney asked.

“He might have. He’s learned the First Lesson of City Hall: people don’t care so much what their public officials do, as what they say.” Pedley filled his cup with Pete’s special extra-strong coffee. “Ollie hadn’t heard a thing about the suspension.”

“She hadn’t?” Barney was plainly astonished. “But I thought—”

“So did I. Just goes to show. You and I aren’t the only ones who don’t trust females. Eat hearty. It’s on the firm.”

“I could eat the saddle off a cop’s motorcycle.” Barney ordered clam broth, chicken cacciatore, salad Ptomaine and mince pie. “There’s no word of that ex-paratrooper or whatever he is.”

“Marine. Lieutenant. He’s a starker, Conover is. Had to be, to prowl around behind Jap lines, couple of weeks at a time. Shaner hasn’t picked him up at the Lownes apartment?”