Stewart Sterling - Dead of Night

“You haven’t even half a mind if you think there was any monkey business.”

He grabbed one of the skates, swung it high. I had no choice. I gave the desk a shove. It pinned him against the chair. He threw the skate. I had a forearm up. It numbed my wrist so for a few seconds I thought it was broken.

I went across the desk at him. He was backed up against the partition. When I bounced knuckles off his chops, his head banged one of those photos of Tildy. I nailed him again on the rebound. A good solid bone-to-bone sock. He went down. The chair went over. The oak arm clipped him as it toppled. His head bobbled around as if his neck was broken.

After I made sure my wrist wasn’t, I shut the door, turned the key on the inside. In case any of his employees barged in and couldn’t see my side of it.

Then I looked around for a lead to Tildy. I frisked him. Went through his pockets, his wallet. What a collection!

Bills, letter from a skate manufacturer with a check in it, letter from a girl who’d been in the Icequadrille line asking for a loan, snapshots of girls, one of a boy wearing a polar-bear-cub costume, press clippings on Skate Mates, a deposition taken by some law firm in a damage suit, a typed report of a metabolism test he’d taken at a hospital recently, business cards from artists, costumers, musicians, advertising men, electricians — nothing about Tildy or where she might have gone.

I put the stuff back in the wallet, in his pockets, rummaged the desk. The only item which might have been of interest was the Manhattan Telephone Directory. Evidently he had the habit of scribbling numbers on the front cover of the phone book. There was one number that had been scribbled within a matter of minutes; it was in ink from a ball-point pen; it smudged a little when I rubbed my thumb across it.

A Lafayette number. I dialed it just on that outside chance. A gravel-voice gent at the other end said, “Blazer — Bill Every speaking.”

Blazer. The Blue Blazer, where Johnny the Grocer had rested his head in a puddle of blood! “Edie Eberlein there?”

“No,” stated Mister Every. “She was. But she stepped out for a short Coke or somethin’. She might be back. Want me to say who called?”

“Walch,” I said. “Keith Walch.”

Renowned names smirked from paint-peeling signs over narrow doorways: Belmont, Grand, Gotham, Plaza. The coy humor of those Bowery flophouse proprietors in naming their stenchy hospices after uptown hotels had slight appeal for me at the moment. My own sense of humor was buckling at the knees. I paid off the taxi on a sidewalk dappled with sunlight and decorated with refuse moderne, walked past hock shops and open-air beef stewdios to the Blue Blazer.

I hadn’t waited for Walch to come out of his coma. Nothing would have been gained unless he’d undergone a change of heart and told me where to find Tildy; after our donnybrook, that didn’t seem likely.

There wasn’t much chance he’d swear out any complaint against me. Only result in bad publicity for his star; be enough of that anyhow, especially if Hacklin hadn’t impounded that farewell note to keep it out of the papers.

But the agent would be no bonus when it came to getting a statement out of Tildy to clear Auguste; wouldn’t be co-operative in uncovering Edie Eberlein’s part in last night’s fatalities. I’d have to do the digging on that, myself. Never had I felt less like it. What I craved was to stretch out on a soft sofa under low lights and sip a tall rum bomba. With Ruth Moore on the side.

The Blue Blazer was one of those drums where the tables are covered with red-checkered cloths, the waiters wear ankle-length aprons, and the straight drinks wouldn’t fill a thimble. It might have been decorated by a drunken painter. A long, black-walnut bar ran along one side; even at that early hour elbow parkage was at a premium.

I couldn’t see either La Eberlein or Roy Yaker, so I wedged myself in between a chief petty officer and a tubby little butterball reciting ribald limericks in a loud voice to anyone who’d listen. Talk about a melting pot! But simmering!

When the gnome-faced Hibernian in a candy-striped shirt brought me my rum sour, I asked him where it was the shooting had taken place. He leaned over the bar to point out a phone booth down by the washrooms.

“Second booth, where the new glass is in.” He would have been pleased to give gory details. “Johnny’d been right here at th’ bar, no more’n a cork pop from where you’re standin’ now. Tommy, there, just give him a ryeball on th’ house,” like an impresario he waved at a lanky barman with handlebar mustaches, evidently a celebrity since the assassination.

I would have asked whether Miss Eberlein had been present at the time of the gunplay, but something told me my inquiry would not have been courteously received. I drifted toward the phone booth. Halfway there, I spotted Edie. She wore black, with a rope of pearls big enough for an elephant’s collar. She was at a table with a brassy babe in a vermilion getup with a neckline that plunged way down to there, obviously not the kind of damsel discussed in polite circles of Burlington, Vermont.

They were ten tables away. Intervening quaffing and laffing made it impossible to hear what Edie was saying. But there were three Tom Collins glasses on their table.

I headed for a door demurely labeled: Used Beer Department, bumped into Yaker coming out.

He’d cut himself shaving. He smelled like a bar sink. The fawn gabardine he’d borrowed from Walch fitted him like a Cub Scout uniform. He boggled at me, glassy-eyed, trying to place me. I went in the men’s room, gave him a minute to wend his way between the cram-jammed tables, went out again.

He was dunking his nose in the Collins, listening to a tongue-lashing from Edie, when I pulled up a spare chair. I thought La Eberlein was going to keel over with apoplexy. She was practically speechless, but the few choice epithets she did sputter out were really pier-six stuff.

I didn’t fool around. “That key, Miss E. One I got out of your bag.”

“You got a nerve like a ulcerated tooth. Comin’ to my table without bein’—”

“Remember? You said the guest gave the key to you. I asked the guest. She said she never gave it to you.”

Plunging Neckline was dumfounded and scared; she wanted out. Yaker pawed soddenly at liquor dribbling off his chin. Edie cursed me till she ran short of breath. She clenched her glass as if to hurl the drink in my face. I did what I could to appear calm and unflustered. My insides were doing nip-ups; Edie’s loud scrawking was attracting the attention of several meaneyed waiters.

“Where’d you get that 21MM key, Edie?”

“You can’t crash my party an’ browbeat me, you thick dick!” she stormed. “Try to pin anything on me, I’ll teach you to mind your own goddam business.” She stabbed an accusing finger at Yaker. “He gimme that key. An’ I can prove it.”

Yaker was too groggy to use discretion. “You’re a lousy liar!” he shouted at her. “I never gave you any—” Two husky waiters laid ungentle hands on him, hauled him to his feet.

He took a feeble swing at one. The other grabbed Yaker’s arm, twisted it up behind his back. Yaker lunged. The table tipped. Glasses smashed. Plunging Neckline shrieked, flopped to the floor. Edie urged the waiters to throw me out, too. It was a merry melee.

I’m well aware what the Hollywood version of a private eye would have done at that point. He’d have smashed the bottom off a club soda bottle, used it to defend himself against all comers. Or, in some miraculous fashion, knocked heads together until the bouncers whined for mercy. I wasn’t up to that stouthearted stuff right then. If ever.