Lawrence Block - The Topless Tulip Caper

“I don’t,” he said. “I believe he was killed. A police investigation might establish that either Mr. Flatt or Miss Remo was at his apartment yesterday.”

“And made him choke on his own vomit?”

Haig nodded slowly. “A simple murder method,” he said, “and quite undetectable. It requires a victim who has had a lot to drink. When he has passed out or fallen asleep, one puts one’s hand over his mouth and drives one’s knee into the pit of his stomach. The victim regurgitates, cannot open his mouth, and the vomit is drawn into the lungs. One might find that Mr. Mallard’s abdomen is bruised. This would still prove nothing. It’s my guess that Miss Remo killed him, and it’s virtually certain that she will never be charged with the crime.”

“Nobody could make it stick,” Leonard Danzig said.

“Quite so. But both she and Mr. Flatt will serve long sentences for the murder of Miss Abramowicz. Perhaps that is sufficient.”

There was some more conversation, and then they left, a few at a time. Leonard Danzig took me aside on his way out and handed me two envelopes. ‘The other half of what I gave you last night,” he said, “plus the bonus we agreed on. All in cash. If Haig wants to pay taxes on it that’s his business, but it won’t show up on my books so it’s strictly up to him. Your boss is everything you said he was. It was worth four grand to watch him operate. It was worth more than that to find out that Gus Leemy hasn’t been running as tight a ship as he should. No wonder the police were leaning on me. They thought I had a hand in a drug operation. I don’t touch drugs.” He smiled. “You’re okay yourself. Anytime you drop by the club, there won’t be any check.”

Within half an hour they were all gone. Maeve O’Connor told me to hang onto her phone number even though the case was solved, and Rita Cubbage gave me her number, too. “In case you want to call me in the middle of the night,” she said, “if something should suddenly come up.” Simon Barckover asked Haig if he had ever thought of working up a nightclub routine. He started to sketch out what he had in mind but Haig glowered at him and he let it lie. Gus Leemy walked out looking very unhappy and Buddy Lippa trailed after him, looking very stupid. That left our client and her boyfriend, and I got rid of him myself.

I took old Haskell aside and told him he ought to divorce his wife, and he got into a riff about how he couldn’t leave her because she would never be able to get another man, so I figured the hell with it and told him how nicely she had done in that department just that morning. This rattled him, and then I told him that I didn’t think he should hang around Tulip anymore, and this rattled him a little too, and he went away.

So Tulip was the only one left, and she went home after Haig gave back her check for five hundred dollars. When she refused to take it he tore it up and threw it in the wastebasket.

“But that’s not fair,” she said. “I hired you to do a job and you did more than I hired you to do and now you won’t let me pay you for it.”

“I have been amply paid by someone else,” he said. “And I am not refusing your payment. I am buying something in return. Use some of that five hundred to buy some good equipment and a group of breeder scats. Select a pair. Breed them. Then tell me exactly how you did it.”

Nineteen

WE SPENT PART of the evening Scotch-taping hundred-dollar bills together. This would have been easier if we’d kept them in order but I dropped the second batch and they got all jumbled up. We had to match serial numbers. It didn’t really take all that long, but the process kept getting interrupted by people calling from the newspapers and things like that.

Then Haig made me play a few games of chess with him, which I won, and then I played a game with Wong and lost in ten moves. And finally I stood up and said, “I’m going home.”

“Very well.”

“Oh, hell. You were beautiful today and I can’t ruin things by not playing my part. I give up. How did you know to doctor the wheat germ?”

“I gave some of it to some fish while you were seating our guests. They lived to tell the tale.” He examined a fingernail. “It was showmanship. I’ll admit that. Without it, the police could still turn up enough evidence to convict handily. Addicts who have bought drugs from Miss Remo. Witnesses who could place her and Mr. Flatt in various places at various times.” He straightened in his chair. “But I wanted to break them in public. The police dig harder when they know they’re digging for something that exists.”

“And you got a kick out of the performance.”

He grunted.

“So how did you do it? I didn’t know we had any strychnine in the house.”

“We don’t.”

“What did you use?”

“Those roach crystals Wong sprinkles around. I dissolved a handful in water and soaked the wheat germ with it.”

“How did you know it would kill fish?”

“I didn’t. I fed some to some fish and they died.”

“I probably should have figured that part out myself. I guess I’m a little punchy. But that’s not the main point. How did you know they switched jars? How did you know the strychnine was in the wheat germ in the first place?”

He just smiled.

“Oh, hell,” I said. “Actually I’m taking some of the credit for this one. Do you remember the pipe dream I was spinning about Haskell Henderson? How he poisoned the fish because Tulip wouldn’t eat the health foods but gave them to the fish instead? And how he killed Cherry because she was eating the crap instead of passing it on to Tulip? Remember?”

“That piffle,” he said. “How could I possibly forget it?”

“Well, that’s what put the idea in your head. And the notion of Jan Remo stabbing Cherry with a pin, you even said hatpin, and you got that idea because I told you how Althea Henderson stuck a hatpin in her tit. For Pete’s sake, I’m the one who does all the work around here. Why is it that you get all the credit?”

He petted his beard. “Surely you can make yourself look somewhat more intelligent when you write up this case, Chip. It’s only fair that you should have the opportunity.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“And don’t forget what Miss Swann advised you this morning,” he went on. “The book needs sex. Not nearly so much as you seem to need it, but it does need sex.” He gazed past my shoulder and got a very innocent look on his face. “I see no reason why you couldn’t embroider the truth somewhat in that department. In the interest of increasing the book’s marketability. You might, oh, fabricate an incident in which you had sexual relations with our client, for example.”

I glared at him.

“But that might not be enough in and of itself.” He played with his beard some more. “Perhaps you could enlarge this morning’s interview with Mrs. Henderson. Suggest that, after she bared her breast to you, you took her to bed. A bit farfetched, to be sure, but perhaps the circumstances warrant it.”

Hell.

Was he just guessing? Did he know? Or was he really sincerely suggesting I make up something that he didn’t know actually happened?

You tell me. I still can’t make up my mind.

A New Afterword

by the Author

Chip Harrison is several things.

Firstly, he’s the narrator and protagonist of four novels: No Score , Chip Harrison Scores Again , Make Out with Murder , and The Topless Tulip Caper .

Secondly, he’s the credited author of those books, or was in their first appearance; more recently they’ve been republished in various editions under my name, Lawrence Block.