My Business is Murder Read online

  WHY BLACKMAIL?

  Anabel was loaded. She owned one of New York’s most successful nightclubs, a block of paying apartments in LA, and a beautiful body that was like money in the bank. So why did the stripper suddenly resort to blackmail? Just when she had it made, why did she decide to play such a dangerous game?

  A Park Avenue executive hires Peter Chambers to get back some indiscreet letters he wrote to a famous strip-tease artist, and the tough private eye smashes into the most fiendish plot of his career—where blackmail doesn’t figure, but murder does.

  Henry Kane

  My Business

  Is

  MURDER

  a division of F+W Media, Inc.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  I: The Big Touch

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  II: Loose End

  Kisses of Death

  Also Available

  Copyright

  I

  THE BIG TOUCH

  CHAPTER 1

  Why blackmail?

  I intended to ask exactly that question. Tonight.

  It didn’t fit. And blackmail always figures to fit.

  It puzzled me, but it didn’t detract from my rapt attention as I watched her take her clothes off. You and I can take our clothes off—we do it every day—and it doesn’t mean a thing, one way or another. But with Anabel Jolly it was special. She took her clothes off with grace and spirit, revealing a lush, long-legged, firm-thighed, narrow-waisted, full-bosomed, dazzling whiteness, and she strutted, proudly and defiantly.

  Anabel Jolly had made a good thing of taking off her clothes. It was rumored that she had received as high as $5000 per week for the simple operation, if simple is the word, of removing her clothes under a blue light on a small stage before a select and palpitating public. She had worked all the best clubs in the country from Hollywood to New York, and right now she was performing her specialty in a club of her own appropriately, if mildly, entitled Club Jolly.

  Then—once more—why blackmail?

  Blackmail is old-fashioned, and there was nothing old-fashioned about Anabel Jolly. Blackmail is dangerous—and although Anabel Jolly was as dangerous a female as ever it has been my pleasure to encounter—the danger involved, piquant and exciting and practically overwhelming, was directed from Anabel Jolly at all comers (provided such comers were male). Futhermore, Anabel Jolly wasn’t looking for trouble—not blackmail trouble. She didn’t need it. Anabel Jolly was loaded. I had put in ten days of intensive spade work before I had met her. I knew all about her. She didn’t have to break the law to obtain money. She had money. She had plenty of money.

  So … why the blackmail?

  I pondered that, sitting alone at a small round table, an appreciative patron at the Club Jolly. The house was packed and attentive and I applauded with the rest of the boobs and I meant it. Anabel Jolly was a peeler, but she was the best in the business and the best is always something. Anabel Jolly was an artist. There are others who have the equipment: structure, beauty, grace and rhythm. Anabel Jolly had more. She combined a display of sex with an air of contempt, a warmth of movement with a frigid poise, a voluptuous wriggling body with a cold and arrogant mein: her eyes were slits that viewed her viewers with disdain: it was as though she erected an invisible barrier between herself and her audience: she was naked but untouchable, and out of reach. And the suckers loved it.

  She did her last bump, her last grind, stood stock-still with her arms outflung, her body in a crouch, her eyes wide open now, the smile of contempt on her mouth—and the curtain closed about her. The lights came on and the hub-bub grew and the waiters stalked the tables. This was the last show and most of the patrons paid their checks and departed. I had another drink and waited. I had a date with Anabel Jolly. This was the fifth night running I’d had a date with Anabel Jolly, and I’d enjoyed every one of them, but tonight I was going to put it to her about the blackmail, and that was a prospect I didn’t enjoy. I looked down at my watch. It was five to four in the morning.

  The tables around me were wearing their chairs when she finally joined me. She rubbed a cool finger along the back of my neck and sid, “Hi, Lover.”

  Lover grinned upward. “Bar’s closed. You can have a sip of mine, if a sip is needful.”

  “More than one sip is needful, Sweetie. Let’s get out of here.”

  I paid and we went. It was warm out, a warm night in October, Indian summer hanging over the town like an omen of doom. I waved to a cab and we rolled, windows down, toward Harlem to an after-hours’ joint called Jackson’s. There was dancing in Jackson’s, and heavy black drapes over the windows, and Dixieland music and velvet throated crooners and shouters, and name-brand undiluted whiskey, and Southern fried chicken, and Chinese noodles, and barbecued spareribs with a secret sauce.

  We sat opposite one another under pink indirect lights in an intimate booth and I watched her unabashedly tear at spareribs. Her mouth was red and wet, and shiny from the grease of the ribs. Her eyes were green and wide, her nose small and tilted, and her red hair was parted in the middle and cut short in a cap of tight glistening Grecian curls. Her dress matched her eyes, green with puffed sleeves, and a slit down the middle deeper than a pickpocket’s reach. I watched her and hated the fact that she was grist for the mill, part of work, part of business, part of the chase after the ever-elusive buck:

  She set down the rib, wiped her mouth with a napkin, sighed, said, “Somehow, Lover, I hate you.”

  “Me?”

  “You. I’ve been waiting for you to open up. It’s five nights now—and nothing.”

  “Open up?” I blinked over Scotch and water.

  “Look. Let’s face it. Nobody’s name can be Timothy Tiddle. Not even yours. How’d I ever get to know you?”

  “We were introduced, remember? By Phil Webster, the usual mutual acquaintance. You thought I was cute and I think you’re lovely. What’s the problem?”

  “Timothy Tiddle, Texas oil millionaire. Brother, how corny can you get?”

  I smiled around the rim of the glass. “What’s corny?”

  “You, pal. You’re no visiting fireman. I’ll say this for you. You spend like a Texas millionaire. You’re a real welcome customer in my joint. Even the waiters like you, and my waiters are tough to please. But you’re no fireman, pal. You’re hip, real hip.”

  Demurely I said, “Little ole me?”

  “Why, there ain’t a joint in town, real joint, not the square joints, that you don’t know and where you’re not known. And just between you and me and a gnawed sparerib bone, you’re not even on the make. I can tell. Your’re just being polite, that’s all, and gentlemanly, and squirelike. Now why in all hell are you squiring me around, kid? Break down and tell little Anabel.”

  The music was smooth now and there were couples tooling toward the dance floor. I put down my drink and pointed a finger over my shoulder. “Shall we?” I said. Gallantly.

  She smiled with all the teeth. “The way you dance, I’d love it.”

  The floor was small, the lights dim, the music schmaltzy, and all of Anabel Jolly nestled beside me as we swayed on a dime, her mouth at my ear, and vice versa. She whispered, “What’s your name, Lover?”

  “Peter Chambers.”

  “You ready?”

  There was a moment of silence. Then I said, “Yeah?”

  “I knew it all the time.”
<
br />   “Knew what?”

  “What your name was. Peter Chambers. I’m glad you finally told me.”

  I moved my head and looked at her. For the first time her eyes were pleased. She winked once, kissed me on the mouth lightly, and put her cheek against mine. Softly she said, “You’re a figure around this town, pal. I played out the reel, waiting for action. You’re a cop. A private dick, eye, richard—whatever the hell they call them. What’s the promotion, pal? You looking to put a padlock on my joint?”

  “No.”

  “I worked hard and I worked a long time to get where I am. I pay plenty ice. If I got to hist the ice, okay with me, you’re on the payroll. Happens you’re cute too. Happens I like you. You’re liable to earn your fee, if you know what I mean.” Her body pressed closer. “I’m not too hard to take, am I?”

  “No.”

  “We got a deal?”

  “No.”

  Her body went rigid. “Let’s break it up, Lover.”

  We went back to our table. I said, “Anabel—”

  “Don’t Anabel me. You’re looking to play it high and mighty, okay, then you’re looking to have it catch up with you. I’ve handled tougher babies then you’ll ever be.”

  “Maybe. But I’ve got nothing against your joint.”

  “Say that again, huh? Say it slow.”

  “Nothing against your joint. Period.”

  “Then what’s the play?”

  “Let me ask a few questions first. May I?”

  “Shoot, Lover. I’m beginning to like you all over again.”

  “You’re fixed pretty good for dough, aren’t you?”

  “The best.”

  “Like how?”

  “Like I own the Club Jolly outright. Like I’ve got a hundred and fifty gees banked, in cash. Like I got a load of government bonds. Like I own a couple of apartment houses in L.A. Like I’m coining dough, every day, hand over fist. It wasn’t this good always, but it’s good now. I’m Number One in the strip racket. There’s always a Number One. There is a Dempsey, a Ruth, a Tilden, a Valentino, a Garbo, a Pavlova—me, I’m Anabel Jolly. I’m doing a little bit of all right.”

  “Then what’s with blackmail?”

  The lids of the green eyes came down like purple shades. One corner of the mouth fought for a smile but it lost against the other corner: tight, and strained, and tense, and unhappy.

  “Roger Aldridge,” I said. “Six lousy letters. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

  “So that’s it,” she said.

  “That’s it.”

  “You working for him?”

  “I’m trying.”

  The smile came, finally, bitter as though she’d bit into a worm. “A fine romance,” she said.

  “You and me?”

  “That’s the way I had it figured. You and me. That’s the way I was born. I either go or I don’t. With you I could go. I figured we could ring a couple bells together. Okay, so I figured wrong. G’bye, Lover.”

  “Roger Aldridge?”

  “Go pick another doll to be a detective with. G’bye, Lover.”

  She stood up fast, tilting the table. I wrestled with it, righted it, and got out of the booth—but I was stopped by a waiter with the check. By the time I paid, she was gone. I came out of the warmth of pink dimness into the sad grey of sunless morning. A few early-go-to-workers straggled by. Traffic was sparse. City noise was muted. I whistled down a cab and I went home.

  CHAPTER 2

  Three o’clock in the office, I put through a call to Roger Aldridge. It was a fancy number, Plaza with a lot of circles. Everything about Roger Aldridge was fancy: his place of business, his mode of dress, his manner of living, his well-modulated voice—even the fee I was going to charge him, plus expenses. When the well-modulated voice came through, I said, “I’ve talked with her.”

  Tightly he said, “Save it.”

  “For when?”

  “When can I see you?”

  “Anytime. You’re the client.”

  “Would you care to drop over to my apartment?”

  “I’d care. When?”

  “I can get away from the shop now. That is, if it’s all right with you.”

  “You’re still the client.”

  “You know the address of the apartment?”

  “Yes.”

  “See you in about a half hour.”

  “Fine.”

  I hung up, rustled papers on the desk, clamped my lower lip between my fingers and tried to think about my fee, but my thoughts churned around Anabel Jolly. There was no doubt that Roger Aldridge could be touched up for a big figure. The guy was a buyer for a jewelry house, small and exclusive, but one of the top ten in the country. Yet, after all, he was an employee, and two hundred and fifty thousand blackmail bucks was a quarter of a million dollars, and that’s not horsehair to fill a mattress. He was in good shape for the touch, what with a society wife of two years standing, a brand new kid, and a snobby job with a plush firm—but a quarter of a million is a quarter of a million—and like that you make it rough on yourself, Miss Anabel Jolly. You hit a guy for two bits, you might make it stick. But you hit a guy where it hurts, and he howls. Howling can’t do you any good, Miss Anabel Jolly. Plus. Plus you don’t need the dough. That makes it crazy. And when it’s crazy you can’t figure it—not without many more facts.

  I didn’t have much. I had a bare outline. Only what Aldridge had chosen to tell me. He had been recommended to me by an uncle (or I had been to him), an uncle named Donald Root, an old guy with a lot of loot, whose legs were withered and who lived in a wheel chair. Aldridge had told me about six steaming letters he had written to Jolly when he was hot on the make, about five years ago and before he was married. My job was to reconnoiter, mosey around, and find out what it was all about. If I could get back the letters without any trouble, it was worth fifteen thousand dollars. If not, it was my usual fee, plus expenses. I had not stated what my usual fee was and right now it was growing. My orders had been not to be in touch with him until I had something definite.

  So I grabbed my hat and headed for Aldridge’s place. I was either going to collect additional facts and really go to work on it, or I was going to collect my fast-growing fee and kiss it off. He lived on lower Fifth Avenue high up in a penthouse apartment, and a smooth-running elevator whisked me up rapidly. I applied an index finger to a mother-of-pearl doorbell, waited, and then the door was opened by a cute maid with a figure and dimples (this was a guy who kept begging for trouble). She said, “Yes?”

  “Mr. Aldridge in?”

  “Yes. Who may I say?”

  “Peter Chambers.”

  “Please come in.” She preceded me into a drawing room. She said, “Please make yourself at home. I will tell Mr. Aldridge you are here.”

  I said, “How long has he been here?”

  “He just came in.”

  Aldridge’s voice filtered through from a nearby room. “Who is it, Marie?”

  The dimples deepened as she smiled at me. She said, “I’ll tell him,” and went out. Almost at once Aldridge was in the room and we were shaking hands.

  “Prompt,” he said. “I haven’t even had a chance to wash. Don’t blame me, do you, for not wanting to talk on the phone? Place of business, that sort of thing.”

  “Don’t blame you in the least. Nice shack you’ve got here.”

  “Eleven rooms and it costs a fortune in rent, but if you don’t put on the dog in my business, you’re dead. Love you to meet my wife but she and the child are visiting her mother uptown. What do you drink, Mr. Chambers? If I don’t have a splash, I’ll blow up.”

  “Scotch and water. One cube.”

  He opened a cabinet and made drinks. He made mine first and handed it to me. For himself he poured half a tumbler of Scotch, added a spray of seltzer, and drank a lot of it in a hurry. He was tall and slim and about forty with blue-grey hair at the temples and a white mustache with waxed ends. He had blue eyes and a trick of squinting th
em at you when he talked. He said, “Any luck?”

  I said “Hardly.”

  He didn’t like that. He said, “Sit down.” He was a man who was accustomed to giving commands. I didn’t sit. I stood. He said, “What do you mean by ‘hardly?’ ”

  “Anabel Jolly. A hell of a gorgeous dame.”

  He smiled. Wryly. He said, “You’re telling me?”

  “Not the blackmail type at all.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well, in my business, you can sort of spot them.”

  Brusquely he said, “Matter of opinion. Let’s skip that, Mr. Chambers. Let’s stick to the facts.”

  “Your the client.”

  “That’s a pet phrase of yours, isn’t it?”

  “Anabel Jolly. She doesn’t have to deal in blackmail. There we have a gal worth three-four hundred thousand bucks at a minimum figure. That’s a matter of opinion too, but put that down as expert opinion, after investigation. I’d say a dame like that doesn’t figure to resort to blackmail, aside from the fact that she’s not the type.”

  “But the fact remains, Mr. Chambers, that she has.”

  “You’ve got me there, sir. It needs talking. And you’ve given me nothing to work on.”

  “Am I supposed to?”

  “That’s up to you. I’ll say this, though. Unless you do, I’d rather you paid me my fee and we close up shop.”

  He finished his drink. “Fee? How much, Mr. Chambers?”

  Now I squinted my eyes at him. “Fifteen days, fifty dollars a day, that’s seven fifty, and I’ll go easy on the expenses. Say, two fifty. That’s a thousand dollars, round figure.”

  He put his glass down, opened his jacket and reached in for a narrow check book and a fountain pen. A holster hung from his belt and a gun was fixed in it.

  I said, “You always wear that?”

  “What?”

  “The gun?”

  “Yes. In my business, as I suppose in yours, it’s a necessary evil. I frequently carry valuable jewelry on my person.”