The Big Kiss-Off of 1944: A Jack LeVine Mystery Read online

  “Don’t get your shit in an uproar, Mel.” He looked at me and past me, to the Florsheims resting at their forty-five-degree angles. “Call the cops, Mel.”

  “There isn’t anything? …”

  “Call ’em, for Crissakes!” Mel, the shark, left in a huff.

  The house dick shook his head. “Don’t mind Mel. He’s just an asshole.” It was a final-sounding statement. All the credits and debits had been counted up and the verdict was in: Mel was an asshole. The house dick went into the bathroom and looked over the body, while I let the cigarette smoke skate through my lungs and out my nose. I heard the water running, and the dick came out of the john, with the bored and sardonic look of a man who had worked in cheap hotels much too long.

  “A professional piece of work,” he said. “No fuss, no muss.”

  “Maybe he was doped up. Doesn’t look like any struggle at all.”

  He gave me a long, humorous look. His eyes were very blue and surprisingly clear, but the pallor and crow’s feet were of a man who had spent his life being baked by fluorescent lights. “You a shamus?”

  “I’m Jack LeVine,” I said, like it meant something, and handed him my card. He read it over and stuck out his hand: “Toots Fellman,” and I shook that hand. He was the first decent guy I’d met that day, maybe the first one in a couple of days. You can go a long time without …

  “You had business with this creep?” he asked.

  “I never got the chance to find out. I knocked on the door a couple of minutes ago and there he was, smiling at me.”

  “You get to know a little in this racket. When that son of a bitch registered, I knew he wasn’t in town to sell cole slaw. I told Mel I’d keep an eye on him.” He sat heavily on the bed and looked toward the bathroom. “Guess you’d say I did a helluva job.” Toots laughed and unclipped his bow tie.

  I just shrugged. “You notice anything about the mug while he was in one piece? Anything out of the ordinary?”

  “Not a thing. He played it close to the chest. Maybe people were up here, maybe they weren’t. I couldn’t sit outside his room and he sure as hell didn’t do business in the lobby. He was a pro, a guy who faded into the woodwork.”

  “A pro killed by a pro,” I said. “Except for the stiff, this room looks set for afternoon tea.”

  “Think he got sapped before he was shot?” Toots asked.

  “If he didn’t, he must have fainted.”

  Toots went back to the bathroom and checked out what was left of Fenton’s head. “On the money, LeVine,” came the voice from the john. “Evidence of swelling back here. He might have gotten it falling on the floor, but I’d bet you’re right.” I heard the water running again. It was a messy job, looking at Duke Fenton. Toots came out wiping his hands on his pants.

  “So far, I’d say there was some double-crossing in the air,” he said.

  “You might be right,” I told him casually. He was eventually going to want to know what I was doing here. Eventually was now; Toots eyed me, more quizzically than suspiciously, and finally asked, “Can you tell me why you were here?”

  “Nope. Nothing major, though, nothing that would end up in a stiff. He was shaking down somebody, but the stakes weren’t big enough for anything like this. Besides, she’s too delicate to have slugged somebody and then shot him three times, with three bull’s-eyes.”

  Toots raised his bushy eyebrows. “You free-lance dicks get all the good ones.”

  “Just in the movies, Toots. I figure Fenton was shaking someone else down, more likely a couple of people, and somewhere along the line, it made sense to put him on ice. But my case is small potatoes.”

  Toots smiled and then said something very nice: “You want to get out of here before the law shows up?”

  “It’d save me a lot of useless lying. Might even save me a punch in the mouth.”

  “I’ll call Mel and tell him to let you out. You can do me a favor sometime.”

  I stood up and shook Toots’s hand. I felt like marrying the guy. “Come over to my office sometime soon, Toots. I’ll buy you a drink out of my closet.”

  He was already at the phone, calling the desk. “It’s a deal,” he said, winking at me and patting me on the shoulder as I breezed out the door. The smell was starting to get a little thick. “Mel,” I heard him say as I started down the hall, “let the shamus out. He’s all right. Because I fuckin’ say so, that’s why.”

  The elephant who ran the elevator was waiting for me down the hall. When I walked into the elevator, he stepped far aside, like I was carrying the plague, and I stood in the back, to avoid the saltwater douse.

  “You think you can find your way down without another steam break, slim?”

  “Why don’t you chew on this, shamus?” He pointed to one of his four hundred pounds, somewhere vaguely around the middle of his body.

  “Sorry, I like my meat lean.”

  “Funny man,” he said out of the side of his mouth, turning his head a little. He spoke with a kind of dignity: a rhino coping with a gnat.

  “Just observant,” I told him. The elevator stopped in the lobby and I got out, stroking fatso on the head, “Nice boy.”

  “I’ll see you again, wiseass.”

  Mel wasn’t too happy to see me walk out the door without getting worked over. He gave me his best shark smile.

  “Thanks for everything,” I shouted over to him. “I’ll tell my friends to stay here when they’re in town.” I pushed my way out of one door just as three husky cops and a couple of detectives, one of whom, Paul Shea, I knew all too well, pushed their way in the other. Like ships in the night. Shea didn’t see me, but it was very close, too close. Another minute spent insulting a fleabag desk clerk and Shea would have had me sitting on the hardest chair in his office for a couple of hours. I would have told him I was at the Lava for the baths and he would have sipped some more coffee and asked me again what I was doing there. That’s how those things go.

  Out on the street again, I took a deep breath. The air was rank and heavy, but it smelled a lot better than the dead man in 805. Going back to the office meant having to speak with Kerry Lane, and I wasn’t ready for it, so I told myself I was hungry and walked over to a good sandwich and coffee joint on West 47th Street, to kill time and read the first edition of The Sun.

  I took an end stool, which gives you the most counter-space, and spread out my paper. I ordered a tuna on toast, light on the mayo, and found that The Sun was pretty happy:our boys were making their post-D-Day rounds of Northern France and the locals seemed to like them a lot better than the Nazis. Everybody was saying it would all be over within a year. Governor Dewey was making noises about the need for new blood in the White House. I remembered him well from the days when he ran the D.A.’s office, when the cops I knew were saying he’d sell his grandma to make page one in the afternoon. President. That was a laugh. A goddamn ambulance chaser.

  I really wanted to soak up the box scores, to follow the exploits of wartime baseball’s one-armed outfielders, and blind, deaf and dumb infielders, but I was trying to figure how I had wandered into a murder in the space of less than two hours. World wars were all very interesting, but the stiff in 805 had me staring into my coffee long before I could drink it. The feeling was unmistakable. I have it on one case a year, maybe every year and a half: I was getting in over my head. Every time I opened a door, someone would topple over with footprints on his face. And then there was Kerry Lane. She was going to call me and ask how it went; I’d tell her Fenton was dead and she’d gasp and I’d try and figure out whether or not she’d been rehearsing that gasp in front of a mirror for the past couple of hours. And if she had known he was dead, why make a sucker out of me for the alibi? But I believed her at 10:30, and if I believed her then—with Fenton already giving the bathroom floor a paint job—I ought to believe her now. So I read the box scores. The St. Louis Browns had shut the Yankees out and Stuffy Stirnweiss went 0 for 4. What was the world coming to, anyway? And what did I ca
re about Stuffy Stirnweiss, who would be off the team when the real Yankees returned from Europe and the Pacific?

  A counter woman whose hair was just a little too black for the lines around her eyes smiled at me.

  “More coffee?” I don’t look half-bad when I keep my hat on.

  “No thanks.” I took a stab at gallantry. “What can I do for you?”

  “Well, for starters you could make this war end a little faster. I got two kids over there, with Patton.”

  I managed some class: “Well, I’m sure they’ll be home very soon,” and felt very, very proud of myself. I left an extra dime under the coffee cup, folded my paper and got up.

  “Mister,” she said and smiled, smiled beautifully, “you left two dimes by mistake.”

  “No mistake.”

  “It’s a mistake.” She took the other dime and slid it toward me. “You didn’t start the war and you didn’t try to pick me up. Good luck to you.” That was two good people in one day. I was pretty sure it couldn’t last much longer.

  It couldn’t. I barely had time to close the office door behind me and throw my hat on the moose head—always a ringer—when the telephone started jumping around my desk. I wasn’t prepared for the voice on the other end.

  “Jack LeVine,” came a husky female voice.

  “Yes.”

  “Hold on please.”

  I held. I was connected.

  “I’m speaking to Jack LeVine?” asked a man. His voice was a lot less husky than the girl’s had been. I wished she had hung on a little longer.

  “You are. Now let me play. I’m speaking to—?”

  He laughed, a tinkling laugh like Chinese bells swaying in the breeze outside a cerise bedroom with lots of mirrors, a zebra rug, and the most divine four-poster bed.

  “God, but you’re an amusing guy. I’m Warren Butler, the producer.”

  “I’m honored. What can I do for you, Mr. Butler?”

  “I’m afraid that I’d rather not discuss it over the telephone.”

  “Well, that’s fine by me. How about leaning out your window and shouting it over?”

  He laughed and laughed, and laughed. “I can see why you’re famous for your sense of humor, Mr. LeVine.” I’m also famous for my black shoes, the ones with the black laces. This was beginning to smell like a herring taking a sunbath, just a little.

  “Shall we play this game a little while longer, Mr. Butler, or can I just assume that you called me for a reason?”

  “Quite right, LeVine.” The putz was still chuckling. “I’d like to speak with you about a rather personal matter and was hoping we could get together as early as this afternoon.”

  “Let me check my book.” I looked out the window. The air shaft was getting a little darker; maybe it would rain. “Looks good, Mr. Butler. What’s the address?”

  “You know the Schubert Building?”

  “Sure. That’s 45th Street.”

  “Right. I’m in 1107.”

  “That’s a lucky number.”

  “It’s stood me in good stead, Jack.” I was “Jack” already.

  “I hope it continues to. Things can happen in New York.” He was silent for a few seconds. When he spoke again, his voice was deeper, less theatrical. I liked it a lot better that way.

  “Three o’clock.”

  “That’s jake with me,” I said, and hung up.

  I pulled a Blatz out of the little half-icebox which building regulations forbade me from owning and/or operating. But no law of man or nature would stop me from having an ice-cold beer every afternoon of my adult life. Snow or sun, wet or dry, the brew helped me think when I needed to think, helped me nap when I needed to nap. It helped me remember and helped me forget. You probably get the point.

  This particular afternoon required a little thought. A lot of questions were reaching me at once, and none of the answers. Did Butler want to talk about Kerry Lane’s blackmailing and, if so, how had he found out? Did he want to talk about Kerry Lane, but not about blackmail? If that was the case, what was the connection with her and did it mean she was holding things back from me? Did Butler’s call have nothing to do with Kerry Lane, just a fabulous coincidence that might earn me a place in Ripley’s “Believe It Or Not”? And it didn’t even stop there. If Butler knew about the blackmailing, what did he want from me? If he needed a cover-up, he had a half-dozen press agents to do the job, all of them willing to toss themselves under the Twentieth Century Limited to keep Butler’s name free of taint.

  Or was I simply about to get used?

  My phone rang again and it was Kerry Lane, breathless with panic. Or playing someone who was breathless with panic.

  “Oh, Mr. LeVine, are you all right?”

  “I’ve got a little gas. Otherwise, I’m okay.”

  “I was afraid you were hurt.”

  “Not like your friend Fenton. He’s not much fun to be with.”

  “He was murdered?”

  “You sound like you know plenty. Tell me about it.”

  “Please, Mr. LeVine, don’t be so cynical. I walked past the Lava about an hour ago, God knows why, but I felt I just had to go by and look in. There were squad cars and an ambulance. I stood around like a tourist and finally got the nerve to ask some cop what was going on. I was so afraid that you’d been hurt, Mr. LeVine, that my knees were knocking.”

  I said nothing, but just listened and tried somehow to decide whether or not Kerry Lane was telling the truth or reading from a script. Until I was sure, I couldn’t afford to tell her about Butler’s call. She was either the kind of girl who might panic and take that long step out the window, or the kind of girl who played her emotions like a poker hand. One way she’d get hurt, the other way I’d get hurt. Or get dead. So bringing up Butler couldn’t do anybody any good, not right now. I decided to play both sides until I knew what the hell was really going on.

  “After I asked the policeman,” Kerry went on, “he just smiled and said ‘a slight case of homicide, honey, nothing catching.’ He thought the whole thing was a joke.”

  “You get a funny sense of humor working homicide. It happens after you see too many people with hatchets and ice picks sticking out of their heads.”

  “Please, Mr. LeVine, I still feel nauseous. The cop didn’t tell me who’d been killed and I didn’t want to look too curious, so I ran for a phone to make sure you were okay. I’m in a pay booth.”

  “Kerry, did Fenton ever mention anybody else in connection with his operation? Did you ever meet anyone else, a partner?”

  “No one. I met him once, in that hotel, and there was no one around, no phone calls. It just seemed like a one-man operation.”

  “If that’s true, you should be in pretty good shape with him out of the way.”

  “Maybe.” She paused. I tried to make out what I could from that pause, but came up empty. I covered the mouthpiece and belched. I sometimes do that, if there’s a lady on the other end. Cover the mouthpiece. “Mr. LeVine, did you find the films in his room? Please don’t look at them.”

  “I wouldn’t, if I had them, but I don’t. I looked all over the room, which wasn’t too hard, but all I could find was underwear and socks. There’s two possibilities. One, he stashed his goods somewhere else—maybe in a Grand Central locker, maybe in his home base, if he had one, maybe with his mother. If that’s the case, and he was working alone, you’re home free. If he had a partner and that partner decided he didn’t want to be partners anymore—which is always an angle in blackmail homicides—then we really haven’t gotten anywhere. You’ll be hearing from the guy.”

  Kerry Lane’s voice got a little quavery. “But that would implicate him. We could blackmail him right back.”

  “Maybe, but not necessarily. He could say he had them all along. He could say he bought them from a go-between. And we have no evidence. Plus, it would mean precisely the kind of publicity you don’t want if we even tried to blow the whistle on the mug.”

  She was crying now, and all I could do
was look at my moose head. The operator asked for another nickel.

  “Mr. LeVine, I’ve got to get out of this.”

  “Listen, Miss Lane, we can get out of this if I have some inkling of what I’m doing. You are quite sure that you have told me everything I ought to know? If not, I’m going to hang up and get a hold of some more life insurance. This isn’t a simple little blackmail case anymore, not when stiffs start getting into the act.”

  She pulled herself together, a little too quickly to suit me. “I don’t think you need to know any more, Mr. LeVine. You have sufficient information.” My ear was getting frostbitten. I was getting mad.

  “Sufficient? That’s a horse laugh, sweetheart. You’re being blackmailed for a couple of stag films and that’s it, except that the guy who’s blackmailing you is suddenly a dead guy. Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with you, maybe we just wandered into something like innocent bystanders, but if you’re holding out on me, toots, the odds are I’m going to wind up as the window display at Frank E. Campbell’s.”

  “I’ll call you later, Mr. LeVine. My nickels are running out and this isn’t getting either of us any place.” The click at her end sent a breeze through my skull. This was a great case for twenty bucks, any way you figured it. I was going through it with a tin cup and a cane and that’s not the way I like to operate. Like it or not, it’s not unusual. People hire a dick to do dirty work, like they pay a colored girl to clean up the john. The don’t leave loose change around the girl and they don’t trust a shamus to buy them the city edition. What they tell him is what they want him to know, which is never what he needs to know. But put two drinks in most people and they’ll tell a private dick things they wouldn’t tell their husbands or wives, life stories with nothing left out. Just like they’ll confess everything to the cleaning lady while finishing off some afternoon sherry. And they do it for the same reason: neither of us counts. We do a job and disappear. I nursed that thought over my beer, staring out of the window. Maybe I’d ask Warren Butler if he wanted me to clean his john. My head wasn’t in such pretty shape, but this racket still seemed a lot better than the dentist’s life my mother had hoped for, or the fur business my old man had gotten stuck in. I couldn’t kick, could I? The hell I couldn’t. I finished the beer and decided to call Toots Fellman at the Lava.