My Business is Murder Read online

  “You call it, kid.”

  “You get in touch with your Miami branch. Fifteen thousand dollars of my fee—but not called my fee or anything like that—goes to Mrs. Mary Davis, 90 Blossom Street, City of Miami. Cash, certified check, any way she wants it. Explain it anyway you like. That you’ve got a standing reward and she earned it. That her information broke the case, that she saved your company two hundred thousand dollars—any explanation that fits. But get that money to her, and get it to her tomorrow. I’ll give you all the details of her connection with this thing in the morning.” I looked at his profile. “Okay?”

  He nodded. “In the bag.”

  “Thanks, Herb.”

  “What’s it all about?”

  “Tell you in the morning.”

  “How about the balance?”

  “That’s my end. Five big ones. Pay when you like.”

  He sneaked a look toward me. “You’re a queer one, Pete. Nobody can figure you and I don’t even try any more.”

  “Who,” I said, “can figure whom? In the ultimate analysis I mean, who the hell really knows anybody else?”

  “Now there’s a fit subject for chit-chat. Let’s have a go at it. Get our minds off blood and murder.”

  Chit-chat ended when he dumped me at my apartment house. Louis opened the door for me, said, “How’s with hoodlums?”

  “Hoodlums?” My gaze was naïve. “Are you kidding?”

  Upstairs, I drew a bath. I added real he-man-odor-bath-salts. I lay out, long and luxuriously in a warm and peaceful bath, reading from a book of plays but keeping an eye on the time. I got out, had a cold shower and rubbed down vigorously. I shaved meticulously, attending carefully to every nick. I used my proudest after-shaving lotion. I patted on powder, washed my hands, fiddled with my hair. I donned underwear with initials (a birthday present), black silk socks, fancy black evening pumps, a crisp white pleated evening shirt, black tie, a hand-sewn lightweight tuxedo and, after a hand-to-hand tussle with hat boxes high in a closet, I produced a narrow-brimmed black Homburg that would have done credit to a diplomat at a political funeral. Arrayed in all my finery, and smelling like a svelte salesman for a discreet bordello, I presented myself, at precisely midnight, at 666 Park Avenue, apartment 7A. I laid a languid finger on the buzzer and buzzed.

  Jane Rawlings called: “Come in.” I’d hardly opened the door when she commanded, “Click that clicker, will you? It locks the door.” I pushed the thing in the lock, closed the door behind me, whipped off my Homburg and bowed.

  “Me,” I declared. “With tuxedo. Finally.”

  No vision of loveliness rushed up to meet me. Nothing rushed up to meet me. I unbent from my bow and glared fretfully into the living room. Jane Rawlings, figure rapturously glistening in silver lounging pajamas, was stretched supine on the couch, one leg up on the arm-rest. She wore no make-up at all. Her hair was tied in a knot on top of her head. Lugubriously, she wailed, “Well, come in. Don’t just stand there.”

  Stiffly. I moved down the three steps into the living room. “Waldorf,” I said. “Charity affair. Ichabod Rally’s Party. Life begins at midnight. Me in a tuxedo. What, if you’ll pardon the expression, the hell happened?”

  “Men.” she said.

  “Men?” I inquired.

  “Men. They think things happen to them. I bet you think you had a rough day.”

  “Depends.” I shrugged as best I could shrug in evening clothes.

  “Go get yourself a drink, my sweet-smelling soulmate. Then sit down on the hassock and listen to a short tale of woe.”

  I scaled the Homburg toward one of the bar stools and it landed on the floor. I went to the bar, made a drink, “I sit and I listen.”

  She regarded me dourly over lowered lids. “You’re far too sweet for words.”

  “Real good mood, aren’t you?” I saluted with raised highball glass.

  “Put down the drink and listen. Please.”

  I put the drink on the floor and folded my hands in my lap. I said, “Still I sit, and still I listen.”

  “Everything’s gone wrong.”

  “But everything?”

  “Remember about the man from Paris?”

  “The one with the divine jewelry?”

  “That one. He never showed up for his appointment.”

  “Tough.”

  “And remember Georgette? Georgette who makes me beautiful? The one and only Georgette?”

  “She was mentioned …”

  “Never showed up. But at least she called. That is, her grandmother called. Laid up with the virus.”

  “The grandmother?”

  “Georgette!”

  “Rough.”

  “And then late, very late, they delivered my evening gown. Guess what?”

  “I’m all through guessing today.”

  “Turned out not to be my evening gown at all. And when I tried to call, the shop was closed. Bad?”

  “Could it be worse?”

  “It can. I got so excited, I banged down the phone, tripped over the wire, and this is the result.” She pointed a long finger at her foot over the arm-rest of the couch. “Sprained ankle. Simply, my dear, and succinctly, every damn thing’s gone wrong. So … we shall stay right here this evening, and fondly we shall gaze upon one another.”

  “And me, finally, in a tuxedo. What better attire for fond gazing?”

  She smiled for the first time. She said, “Do me a favor.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “Stand up, very carefully, and come here, very carefully, and kiss me, very carefully. I’ve got my fingers crossed that that doesn’t go wrong.”

  I stood up, very carefully.

  I went to her, very carefully.

  I kissed her, very carefully.

  It didn’t go wrong.

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  Kisses of Death

  ONE

  I WAS seated in my briefs in the kitchen having breakfast. It was Saturday, June 17, nine-thirty of a hot day in spring. Friday night’s newspaper was propped against the sugar bowl and I was sipping coffee and reading about murder, rape, divorce, delinquency, and political missile rattling, when the phone rang. I relinquished the literature, went to the living room, picked up the phone, said, “Hello?”

  “Mr. Chambers?” It was a woman.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Peter Chambers?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “May I see you, Mr. Chambers? On business?”

  “Yes, of course. When would you like?”

  “Right away, if you please.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Mrs. Kiss.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Mrs. Valerie Kiss.”

  “Do I know you, Mrs. Kiss?”

  “No.”

  Kiss. It is a name. It is not somebody making a joke at nine-thirty in the morning during breakfast. Once before, several years ago, I had had a client by the name of Kiss—Justine Kiss. I had then checked the Kisses in the Manhattan telephone book. There had been eighteen Kisses listed. Kiss is a name.

  “Are you a relative of Justine Kiss?” I said.

  “No. Why?” She sounded annoyed.

  “Just that Kiss is an unusual name. I thought perhaps Justine had recommended—”

  “Mr. Felix Davenport recommended you to me.”

  Felix Davenport was an old friend, a well known actor on the Broadway stage, but for the past three years Felix had been living on the West Coast wasting his talent but earning a huge income as the straight man to a comic in a television series.

  “Oh,” I said, “you’re from Hollywood?”

  “I’m from New York.”

  “But Felix—”

  “Look, please, Mr. Chambers, it’s very important that I see you as quickly as possible. May I come over?”

  “Sure. Do you know the address?”

  “Yes.”

  “How soon will you be here?”

 
“Fifteen minutes all right?”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “Thank you,” she said and hung up.

  I was showered and shaved. I cleaned up the kitchen by putting the dishes into the sink. That took two minutes. I dressed quickly but carefully as is fitting when the client is a lady and the lady is a stranger. That took ten minutes. With three minutes to spare, I was about to light a cigarette, when the bell rang. My lady was either prompt by habit or the matter was as urgent as she had intimated.

  The matter was as urgent as she had intimated.

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  Text Copyright © 1954 by Henry Kane

  Cover Art, Design, and Layout Copyright © 2012 by F+W Media, Inc.

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  Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

  eISBN 10: 1-4405-4140-X

  eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4140-7