Lawrence Block - The Topless Tulip Caper

He didn’t know the other waitress or the barmaid, and I didn’t ask him about his own secretary because I figured it would be more fun to ask her myself. I wound up the session with Barckover and went into the outer office and perched on the corner of her desk, notebook in hand. “I’m playing detective,” I said “Mind if I ask a couple of questions?”

She grinned. “You mean you’re going to grill me? I already told you everything I know.”

I told her we’d just go over a couple of things, and we did. I didn’t learn much. I found out that the other waitress was named Rita and that was all she knew about her. Jan the barmaid was a regular at Treasure Chest, but my green-eyed friend hadn’t had much contact with her except to order drinks and get change. She hadn’t seen anything suspicious, hadn’t recognized anybody except for Barckover and the people who worked at the club, and she knew nothing about Cherry’s private life.

“There’s something else,” I said. “How am I going to catch you at the Persian Room if I don’t know your name?”

She smiled. She didn’t show me as many teeth as Haskell Henderson, but they looked better on her. “It’s Maeve O’Connor,” she said. I made her spell her first name and she did. She also told me it was Irish, but I could have figured that part out by myself. Then she pointed out that she didn’t know my first name, so I supplied it, and then I told her I’d better take down her phone number.

“Is that what detectives always do?”

“Not always,” I said.

“You could reach me through the office.”

“But what if a case starts to break in the middle of the night and I need to check something with you? Mr. Haig would give me hell if I didn’t have your number.”

She gave it to me and I wrote it down. Then we looked at each other for a minute or two, and I could feel myself beginning to fall in love, which is something I probably do more readily than I should. I would have enjoyed perching on her desk for the rest of the afternoon, but Haig had given me a million things to do and there wasn’t all that much time to do them in. I said I guessed I’d better be going, and she said “Goodbye, Chip,” and I said, “I’ll see you, Maeve,” and that was that.

I called the advertising agency where Andrew Mallard worked and got a secretary who said that he was away from his desk. I asked when he would be likely to return to his desk and she said she didn’t know. I pressed a little, and it turned out that he hadn’t been at his desk all day, that he in fact had evidently taken the day off. I don’t know why she couldn’t come right out and tell me this straight out, but I guess when you work in advertising you get in the habit of doing things obliquely.

I tried Mallard at his home number and the line was busy. I looked at my watch and saw that it was almost three and remembered that I hadn’t had anything to eat all day except for a sip of dandelion coffee substitute. I realized that I had to be hungry. I don’t know if this would have occurred to me if I hadn’t happened to look at my watch, but once I did I was starving. I found a luncheonette down the block and had a hamburger and three glasses of milk and a cup of coffee. I decided not to look at my watch again because it might remind me how little sleep I had had and I wanted to be awake when I talked to Mallard. Except that I wasn’t destined to talk to Mallard. I called him after I’d finished my meal and the line was busy again, and I decided it wasn’t the usual sort of busy signal, and I called the operator and asked her to check the line for me. She went into a huddle and came back with the news that the phone was off the hook. (What she actually said was that the instrument’s receiver was disengaged, and it took me a second or two to translate it.) That had been my guess, and I decided Mallard had been up half the night with the police and the other half brooding, and now he was taking the day off and having himself a nap.

There’s a way the operator can make the phone ring even when it’s off the hook, and I considered telling her something about it being a matter of life and death, but they probably hear that line all the time and I didn’t think I was likely to get the right note of conviction into my voice. Then too, if Mallard was sleeping it off he probably wouldn’t welcome my making a bell ring in his apartment.

The next name on my list was Glenn Flatt, Tulip’s ex-husband and current friend. He worked at Barger and Wright Pharmaceuticals in Huntington, Long Island. I got the number from Information and placed the call. The switchboard at Barger and Wright put me through to a man who told me that Flatt was in some laboratory or other and couldn’t be disturbed. He asked me if I wanted to leave a number, so I left Haig’s.

I didn’t have a number for Leonard Danzig, and from what I’d heard about him I decided I wanted to take my time approaching him. Mrs. Haskell Henderson—I still didn’t know her first name—lived on the other side of the Hudson. I would eventually want to see her in person, and I’d have to do that during the day when there would be no chance of running into Mr. Wheat Germ himself.

Helen Tattersall was on my list. I had no idea what questions to ask her, but sooner or later I would have to get a look at her, if only to see whether I had spotted her at the club. Tulip’s building was in the neighborhood; I could just walk over there and invent a story.

Except that I didn’t really want to. Treasure Chest was also in the neighborhood, and Tulip had said that they were open afternoons so that businessmen could stop and goggle at some breasts before heading home to their wives. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to look at breasts, but I had to talk to Gus Leemy and he could give me a line on the other waitress and supply Jan’s last name and address. He could also pin my aims behind my back while Buddy Lippa beat me to a pulp. I decided to chance it.

Nine

“THEY DIDN’T BEAT me up,” I said. “What they basically did was ignore me. I had a lot of trouble making them believe I was a detective. They thought I wanted the girls’ names because I was trying to make out with them, for Pete’s sake.”

“They seem good judges of character,” Haig murmured.

I ignored that. “The barmaid is Jan Remo. She’s been working there for almost a year. She’s divorced, and has a two-year-old kid. The other waitress—not Maeve—is named Rita Cubbage. She just started there about a week ago. I can see them both late tonight if I’m awake because they’ll be working their usual shifts.”

“The club will be open, then? In spite of the tragedy?”

“Leemy doesn’t think it’s a tragedy. He thinks it’s a bonanza. He’s got a sign in the window that you’d love. ‘See the stage where Cherry Bounce was murdered! See the show so hot it might kill you!’“

“You’re making this up.”

“I am not.”

“Heavens,” Haig said.

We were in his office. It was almost five-thirty and I had just finished summing up my day in my inimitable fashion. I had wanted to rush my report so that I could see Tulip, who had finally been sprung from jail by one of Addison Shiver’s underlings and had been conveyed directly to Haig’s house after a quick stop at her apartment to shower and change her clothes and feed her fish. Haig had spent about an hour grilling her, and then when I got back I hardly had time to say hello before he’d banished her to the fourth floor so that he could hear my report privately.

She hadn’t seemed to mind the banishment—she’d been itching to study Haig’s operation up there—but I minded. So I tried to hurry my report but Haig wasn’t having any. He made me go over everything in detail and then he sat there with his feet up and I wanted to yell at him.