Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

There were two or three penciled scrawls on hers. Probably had so many numbers on tap she couldn’t keep them all in her head. Anyway there it was—

Ruby Moran — Wickersham, so-and-so

Gilda Johnson — Stuyvesant, such-and-such

Tommy Vaillant — Butterfield 8-14160

This was getting hotter all the time. Butterfield is a Gold Coast exchange, Park Avenue and the Sixties. But the cream of the crop don’t sport store-bought monogrammed matches — that’s tin-horn flash. Which meant that this guy, whoever he was, was in quick money of some kind and hadn’t caught up with himself yet. Which meant some kind of a racket, legitimate or otherwise. Which meant that maybe she had known a little too much about him and spoken out of turn, or had been about to, and therefore was now sprouting a lot of grass up at Woodlawn. At the same time, as I said before, it didn’t necessarily have to mean any of those things, but that was for me to find out.

As for the police, they’d had such an open-and-shut case against Jackie that it hadn’t behooved them to go around scouting for little things like folders of matches in the seams of a suit he hadn’t been wearing when they arrested him nor unlisted numbers on reference cards hidden away in the leaves of a phone book. It took a little party like me, with nothing behind her face, to do that much.

I went out, thought it over for awhile, and finally went into one of the snappy theatrical dress shops on Broadway.

“Show me something with a lot of umph,” I said. “Something that hits your eye if you’re a him and makes you see stars.”

The one I finally selected was the sort of a bib that you wore at your own risk if the month had an “r” on the end of it. It made a dent in the five hundred but that was all right. I wrapped it up and took it, and everything that went with it. Then I found a crummy, third-class sort of bar near where I lived and spent a good deal of time in there building myself up with the bartender and pouring a lot of poisonous pink stuff into the cuspidor whenever he wasn’t looking.

“Why no,” he said when I finally popped the question, “I couldn’t slip you anything like that. I could get pinched for doing that. And even if I wanted to, we don’t have nothing like that.”

“I only wanted it for a little practical joke,” I said. “All right, forget it. I never asked for it. I haven’t even been in here at all, you never saw me and I never saw you.”

But I paid for the next Jack Rose with a ten-dollar bill. “There isn’t any change coming,” I said. When he brought the drink there was a little folded white-paper packet nestled in the hollow of his hand. I took the drink from him without letting it touch the counter.

“Try this,” he said out of the corner of his mouth, and sauntered up front, polishing the bar. I put it in my bag and blew.

They’d already tuned in my phone when I got back and I christened it by calling that Tommy Vaillant number. A man’s voice answered. “Tommy there?” I cooed as though I’d known him all my life.

Mr. Vaillant, said the voice, was out for the evening. The “Mr.” part told me it must be his man Friday. And who was this wanted to know?

“Just a little playmate of his. Where can I reach him?”

“The Gay Nineties Club.” Which made it all the easier, because if he had come to the phone himself I would have been in a spot.

It took me an hour to get ready, but if my face was good before I started you should have seen it when I got through. I figured I had plenty of time, because anyone who would go to a club that early must own an interest in it and would stick around until curfew. I nearly got pneumonia going there in that come-and-get-it dress, but it was worth it.

I rocked the rafters when I sat down and wisps of smoke came up through the cracks in the floor. The floor show was a total loss, not even the waiters watched it. I ordered a Pink Lady and sat tight. Then when I took out a cigarette there were suddenly more lighters being offered me from all directions than you could shake a stick at, the air was as full of them as fireflies.

“Put ’em all down on the table,” I said, “and I’ll pick my own.”

A guy that went in for monogrammed matches wasn’t going to neglect putting his initials on his cigarette-lighter and I wanted to pick the right one. I counted nine of them. His was a little black enamel gadget with the T.V. engraved on it in gold.

“Who goes with this?” I said and pushed the empty chair out. He wasn’t the ratty type I’d been expecting. He looked like he could play a mean game of hockey and went in for cold baths.

“Whew!” I heard someone say under his breath as the other eight oozed away. “There would have been fireworks if she hadn’t picked his!”

Oh, so that was the type he was! Well, maybe that explained what had happened to Bernice.

He sent my Pink Lady back and ordered fizz water. “What’s your name?”

“Angel Face,” I said.

“You’re telling me?” he said.

“Shay come on,” he said three hours later, “we go back my plashe — hup — for a li’l nightcap.”

“No, we’ll make it my place,” I said. “I’d like to get out of this dress and get some clothes on.”

When we got out of the cab I turned back to the driver while the doorman was helping Vaillant pick himself up after he’d tripped over the doorstep going in. “Stick around, I’m coming out again by myself in about half an hour, I’ll need you.”

Vaillant was just plastered enough to vaguely remember the house and too tight to get the full implication of it. “I been here before,” he announced solemnly, going up in the elevator with me.

“Let’s hope you’ll be here some more after this, too.” I let him in and he collapsed into a chair. “I’ll get us our nightcap,” I said, and got the two full glasses I’d left cooking in the fridge before I went out. One was and one wasn’t. “Now if you’ll just excuse me for a minute,” I said after I’d carefully rinsed the two empty glasses out in hot water.

I changed scenery and by the time I came in again he was out like a light. I got his address and his latchkey, went downstairs, got in the cab, and told him where to take me. It was Park Avenue all right and it was a penthouse; but very small — just two rooms.

I’d found out back at the Gay Nineties that his Filipino didn’t sleep there but went home at about ten each night, otherwise it would have been no soap. The elevator was private.

“Expect me?” I froze the elevator-man. “He sent me home ahead of him to punch the pillows together!”

It was three A.M. when I got there and I didn’t quit until seven. I went over the place with a fine-tooth comb. Nothing doing. Not a scrap of paper, a line of writing to show he’d ever known her. He must have been burning lots more than logs in that trick fireplace of his — around the time Bernice was decorating the show window at Campbell’s Funeral Parlor. There was a wall-safe, but the locked desk in the bedroom was a pushover for a hairpin and I found the combination in there in a little memo book.

The safe started in to get worthwhile. Still no dope about Bernice, but he’d hung onto the stubs of a lot of canceled checks that he shouldn’t have. One in particular was made out to a Joe Callahan of Third Avenue, two days after she’d died. Two hundred and some-odd bucks — just about enough to take a man and wife to the other side — third-class.

Joe Callahan had been the name of that day doorman at 225 East 54th that Westman had tried so hard to locate, only to find he’d quit and gone home to Ireland. I slipped it under my garter just for luck. If he’d also greased the night doorman to forget that he’d been a caller at Bernice’s, he’d had sense enough to do it in cash. There was no evidence of it. Ditto the driver of the car that had smacked down her maid up in Harlem.