Dan Marlowe - The Fatal Frails

Harry Palmer snorted indignantly. “Aren't you two going to fight?” he demanded.

“That what you want?” Johnny asked him. “Throw a couple hundred dollars up there on the table.”

“Four hundred,” Tiny stipulated. He smiled his broken-toothed smile. “We'll split,” he told Johnny.

“You two go to hell.” The jaunty little man moved away from the wall to which he had retreated. “For four hundred I can buy a massacre.”

“For four hundred that's what we'll give ya,” Tiny informed him hoarsely. “Right, Killain?” He placed a huge palm, fingers wide-spread, in the center of Johnny's chest and slowly brought the weight of his shoulder to bear behind it. “Mebbe my foot didn' slip,” he said reluctantly after a moment. He looked at Palmer. “For four C's we could fin' out?”

Harry Palmer shook his head. “Right now I want him healthy,” he said briskly. His face darkened. “So long as I don't go on hearing about my bushwhacking him in doorways. You just come over here to needle me, Killain?”

“Guy I'm thinkin' of goin' into business with gave me your name as a character reference,” Johnny said. “I thought I'd check. Jules Tremaine.”

“That gonif!” the little man exploded. “He never gave you my name as a character reference. He knows better. He killed Jack Arends. The damn fool police might not-”

“The damn fool police picked him up an' questioned him on that. He's still walkin' around.”

“That's why they're damn fools. He did it,” Palmer insisted stubbornly. “I sent Tiny over there with a picture of him, and the doorman identified him as the man who went upstairs with Jack before you and Madeleine and Gloria arrived. No one saw him leave.”

“Speakin' of damn fools,” Johnny said drily, “you didn't stop to think that if the doorman mentioned that to Tremaine it would warn him to spread a little grease around to smear identification? The police had to let him go because they couldn't get a positive.”

“Is that right?” The little man looked momentarily abashed. “I don't care,” he said, rallying. “Tremaine killed Jack, and he tried to kill Madeleine. Only thing prevented him was that you opened the door instead. He hates her. It's-”

“He's ironclad on an alibi for the time I got nipped,” Johnny interrupted.

“Alibi!” Palmer sneered. “Gloria Philips is his alibi, and when Tremaine snaps his fingers that roundheels falls over backward. Alibi!”

“The police-”

“I don't give a damn about the police!” Harry Palmer's graying hair stood up all over his head as he ran an excited palm through it. “They couldn't find their way out of a paper bag with the sides out. I tell you this Tremaine is no damn good. He's a cutie, right in Dechant's class. I had to fire him myself when I had him working for me in Europe. I had to read every report of his three times looking for twists and angles. Even after I'd warned her, Madeleine caught him flimflamming her on a job she'd hired him for in Basel, and she hung him out to dry. He swore he'd get even.”

“Then why would he go to her apartment with Arends?”

“He didn't know why he was there.” Harry Palmer paused, as though considering. “Jack's gone now; I guess it won't make any difference if I tell you. This is a little involved. Jack had this long-time girl friend he'd set up in a lingerie shop down below Herald Square. The place even made a little money.”

He smiled as though at some secret joke. “I don't know why the hell it is even the smartest guys think they're putting something over on their wives. The day after the funeral Mrs. Arends didn't even wait to sell the lingerie shop; she just went down there and turned the key in the door. It's in a broker's hands now.” He gestured dismissingly. “Anyway, a couple of years ago Claude Dechant came to Jack and offered to supply him with duty-free perfume, the expensive stuff, for the lingerie shop. The place was a natural outlet for it, Jack went for the idea, and the arrangement continued until Dechant's death.”

Palmer shook his head wonderingly. “Then a lot of things happened. It turned out Claude had only been the middleman; he picked up the stuff at this end of the line and turned it over to Jack. When Dechant died the purser on the steamer who'd actually been bringing it in had perfume and no place to put it. Somehow he knew that Claude knew Tremaine, and he went to Tremaine. That smart bastard put two and two together and went to see Jack. Among the three of them they got the perfume wheels turning again, but then Jack got hungry.”

Harry Palmer drew a deep breath. “I told you this was involved. Jack went to Madeleine. He wanted her to open up a couple of shops as additional outlets, and he told her why. He never mentioned Tremaine, knowing Madeleine would have run five miles at the sound of his name. Where Jack made his mistake was he didn't realize Jules felt just as strong the other way. Having a good-sized streak of larceny in her, Madeleine liked the sound of the thing, all except the part about the investment required to open the new shops. Madeleine's idea is bully for the profit motif, but risk her own capital to obtain it? Don't be silly, dear man. Madeleine came to a bloke named Harry Palmer.”

The little man leveled a finger at himself. “Right about there was where that shmuck Harry Palmer began to get an idea for the first time of what Dechant had been doing with Palmer's money that supposedly was being used for legitimate importing. Now you should understand, Killain, that when Madeleine asks me for something, mostly she gets it.” He shrugged. “So I'm a sucker. I'll probably die of a heart attack in that wide-screen bed of hers one of these days, and it will be damn well worth it. Anyway, this time I turned her down. I'm afraid of the Treasury Department, and before I'd finished talking to her she was afraid, too. She went back and told Jack no dice, but Jack wasn't the type to give up that easily. I figure he brought Tremaine over there to try a little head-knocking. When he gave Tremaine the pitch to warm him up, Tremaine blew his stack, particularly that Madeleine of all people should have been told of the original operation. I think he threatened to pull out altogether, right there, that Jack got a little ugly and Tremaine a damn sight uglier. Tremaine blasted Jack, and took off.”

Armagnac, and now perfume, Johnny thought. Jules Tremaine was fast getting to be a boy tycoon. Johnny grinned at Harry Palmer. “So you didn't like the perfume business? I wonder how you'll like the liquor business?” He started backing to the door.

“Liquor business?” Palmer asked puzzledly. His eyes widened as he noted Johnny's flank exiting. “Hey! I want to talk to-”

“I'm late,” Johnny said from the doorway. He wanted none of the little man's shrewd questions right now. “Damn it, Killain! There's a couple of things-”

“Drop over and see me, Harry.” Johnny went up the passage at a fast walk, with Palmer's irritated bark ringing in his ears.

Johnny awoke, with a start, in total darkness. Animal instinct told him that he was not in his own bed. In the second it took him to claw his way back to full consciousness he realized that what had awakened him was a round knee in the small of his back. In the same second he knew where he was.

“Awake?” Gloria Philips' husky voice murmured in his ear.

“Yeah.” He was wide awake, and shaken. “Listen, kid. Don't wake me like that again. Some things I do by reflex. You wouldn't appreciate it.”

“Well-” she said, pouting, “you must admit it's not very flattering, having you fall asleep like that. Cigarette?”

“Yeah. An' I can sleep anywhere.”

“Obviously.” She sat up beside him, and he heard the double click-click of her lighter as it misfired once before catching. In its sudden flare he saw the long, curving sweep of bare shoulders and back, and the frown of concentration on the beautiful ivory oval of her features as she lighted two cigarettes at once. Golden freckles splashed lightly on the milky skin down to the full white breasts, then vanished. “Here.” She handed him a cigarette, snapped-off the lighter and lay down beside him again. “The carpet's the ashtray.” She turned restlessly onto her side. “I'm about ready to move out of here, anyway.”