Stewart Sterling - Where There’s Smoke

Those purple blotches warned of special hazards: stores of powdered charcoal and sulphur in wholesale drug companies, carboys of searing acid in metal-working plants, ammonia-cooled freezer systems in cold-storage warehouses, firework factories, toy plants full of explosive celluloid trimmings, dynamite stored in construction company tool houses—

That map was all right for the battalion chiefs and the company captains — but it didn’t mark the worst dangers. There weren’t any colored spots to show the location of firebugs, of pyromaniacs!

“Listen, mister.” Ross’s voice was sharp with annoyance. “I can’t futz around here all night. I got some rights as a citizen.”

“Phone there.” Pedley peeled off his wet coat and vest. “Ring your legal eagle. Ask if a habeas will do you any good, long’s I want to hold you.”

“You know damn well I can’t phone him. I don’t even know where they took him.”

“Paul Amery your lawyer, too?”

“Certainly. If I knew what hospital—”

“Don’t bother with it. He’ll only tell you I’ve the same right to commit you a judge has.” Pedley took off his pants, stood in front of the radiator in his shorts. “What was Amery doing at the theater, anyway?”

“We were going to check over the new contract, after rehearsal.”

“What contract?” The marshal hung up the wet trousers, took a blue serge pair from a hanger.

“Leila’s. Five thousand clams a week for fifty-two weeks, noncancellable. For Winn’s, the Coffee of Connoisseurs. I suppose you think that’s a lot of hubba-hubba.”

“Quarter of a million bucks? Sounds like a mortgage on the mint.”

“That’s not counting the extras.” Ross rubbed the back of his neck, resentfully. “Recordings, personal appearances, endorsements, television, plus the shifting pictures.”

“You get a cut on those fancy figures?”

“I get a straight salary. Less taxes, alimony, and what I lay out for beer and skittles to the so-called fourth estate.”

“Brother Ned was the ten-percenter?”

“Supposed to be. Only he was cutting the take about fifty-fifty, if you ask me.”

“I do. How’d he get away with that?” Pedley sat down at the battered desk, swung around in the swivel chair so he could look down at the white lacework of snow on City Hall Plaza, at the salt-and-pepper streaks of the churned-up streets.

“The creep must’ve known where the body was hidden,” Ross answered. “Only way to explain her standing for the stuff he pulled this afternoon.”

“Do I have to jerk it out of you with forceps?”

The publicity man squinted as if the light were too bright. “He bust in, whiskyed to the gills, just when the boys are going good behind her. Ned looks like something the Salvation Army refuses to collect: dirty, no shave, no press. He walks right up, grabs the mike away from her, and makes with the four-letter stuff. Leila tries to shush him, but Ned starts riding her. ‘Same ol’ brush-off. Can’t be bothered with Neddie, now. Forgotten how Neddie bothered about you when we were beggin’ for split weeksh on Orpheum time.”

“Doesn’t sound brotherly, exactly. But it doesn’t sound like a reason to barbecue the man.”

“Wait’ll you hear. From the control room, Chuck — he’s the agency producer — does his best to break it up by hollering on the talk-back for everybody to take ten. So while the boys in the band are easing out for Cokes and smokes, Paul Amery and I tear up on the stage where Kelsey’s giving Ned the bum’s rush.”

“Kelsey’s your orchestra leader?”

Ross shook his head, pityingly. “You don’t follow the beat much, do you? Hal Kelsey’s the King of Sweet. Anyway, he’s feeding Ned some highly original line about not killing the golden goose to spite his face, and Ned’s bawling about how he built Leila up and he can tear her down any time he wants. Hal makes a grab for him. Leila jumps between them. Ned swings. Not at Hal. At her.”

“He socked her?”

“Smack on the kisser!” There was a harsh edge to Ross’s voice now. “Knocked her down. Cut her lip.”

Pedley swung around to look at him. “Who socked him?”

“I did. Wish I’d broken his ugly jaw. No such luck. I started the punch away down in the Third Precinct but he was going away from it. He bounced off the piano and wound up in the drums.”

“Then you couldn’t bring him to — so you went out to get a doc for him?”

“I’d have let the crut lay there until his eyes dropped out. Paul thought we ought to load him in a cab, take him to his hotel. But Leila made Chuck help her lug him up to her dressing-room — and sent me for the doc.”

“Where was Amery while this was going on?”

“Phoning. Leila asked him to call Ned’s hotel to see if we could get hold of Staro.”

The marshal’s eyebrows asked the question.

“Staro’s the strong-arm Ned kept as combination bodyguard and wet nurse. He was supposed to bum around with Lownes, wherever he went. Once in a while, when Ned went off the deep end, he’d give his pal the slip. I guess that’s the way it was this afternoon.”

“So Miss Lownes and this Chuck whatever-his-name-is—”

“Gaydel. Best producer who ever turned clambake into fanfare.”

“Uh, huh. So they were the only ones who went up to the dressing-room with her brother?”

“’Sright.”

“See Gaydel after you left for the medico?”

“Only on the street, afterward. He told me he’d come down from the dressing-room a few minutes before Leila and then she’d run back up for Ned when the fireworks began.”

“Kind of puts it up to your talent, doesn’t it?”

“Why?”

“She who gets slapped. Looks like she’d have more reason to want him out of the way than anyone else.”

“Nuts! Call the roll of those who wished him harm, and lo — T. Ross’s name would lead the rest.”

“Her dressing-room. And she was the one to suggest taking her brother up there.”

“Tell me one good reason why Ned couldn’t have touched the fire off himself.”

“Person who sets a fire has to time it right. Man who was gaga couldn’t have cut it that fine.”

Ross bent over the desk, planted his fists on it. “If Leila’d wanted to snap the switch on Ned, she’d had a million chances when nobody would know anything about it. And if she’d had any idea of hurting him, would she have knocked herself out, trying to rescue him?”

“Your interest in the Luscious Leila.” Pedley was bland. “I expect that’s purely professional, hah?”

“What else would it be?”

“From what I saw of the babe — and I saw quite a bit of her — I couldn’t blame you if it was personal.”

Ross put on a prop smile. It curled up the corners of his lips but left the scowl around his eyes. “A massive intellect, that’s what it is! A great big High-Q!”

“The way you carried on when the amby took her away — that seemed a trifle ripe for a mere press agent.”

The smile froze on the other’s face — then he relaxed. “The old needle. Got under my skin there for a minute. That’s what you counted on, wasn’t it? Okay. Say my interest in Leila isn’t all business. You know what business comes before.”

Pedley nodded, waited.

“Oke. The kid’s had a long climb to get to the top of the billing. It’s my job to keep her there. The job comes first.”

“You’re going to have to hump yourself, when it breaks in the morning editions that I’ve had to pin a rap on her.”

“You don’t think I’m going to sit back and watch while you bull your way around my china shop! I’ll take this to people who can tell you where to head in!”