Dead in a Bed Read online

  His studio, rent and furniture and equipment donated by Dad, was lofty and cavernous, and when I rang the bell at one o’clock of the afternoon of Friday, June fifteenth, clangorous reverberations returned in hollow echoes but Jack Medford opened the door before the last echo died.

  “Hi,” he said. “Please come in.”

  He was dressed to the teeth but without cutlass. He was wearing a dark-blue pin-striped suit with peaked lapels, obviously custom-tailored. His white shirt was formal with French cuffs and gold links. His tie was richly conservative, dark-blue with small red figures.

  “All dressed up and nowhere to go,” I said.

  “Incorrect, Mr. Chambers. I have somewhere to go, three some-wheres, as a matter of fact. I’ve kept postponing them, waiting for you.”

  “Gals?”

  He grinned. “Incorrect again. Customers. That is, possible customers. Each interested in a bronze bust of himself and each willing to pay.” He shook his head. “A man must be an awful crumb to want a bronze bust of himself.”

  “Each to his hone. Some guys feel sharp with a bronze bust, some guys need them live and nippled, and for some guys nothing else will do but an autobiography. Where’d you dig up the prospective customers?”

  “Recommendations.”

  “From whom?”

  “Penelope Arlington.”

  “We’re back to her again, huh?” I walked all around him, inspecting him. “She seems to be doing all right by you.”

  “Not as all right as I’d like.”

  “She’s producing, isn’t she? Aside from customers?”

  “Yes, but not enough.”

  “Wasn’t it only this morning that you said you had all the money you need?”

  “All the money I need not to have to argue with Dad about money—that’s what I meant. But I don’t have all the money I need, not by a long shot.”

  “Don’t tell me that when Penelope Arlington is stuck on a handsome young guy, she’s stingy.”

  “She’s generous.”

  “But not generous enough to suit you.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Who in hell could ever be generous enough to suit you, little pal? You treat money like its toilet paper.”

  “Please, no lectures, not today, Mr. Chambers.” He intertwined the fingers of his hands and squeezed and I could hear the crack of knuckles. “What about my father? Did you find out anything at the bank that made any sense?”

  “Nothing, He packed a bag and went to lunch and didn’t come back. No rhyme, no reason, no sense, nothing.”

  “Christ, it’s nutty, baffling, crazy.”

  “So said, in substance, Mr. Donald P. K. Sloan. Yet you both seem to be going along doing business as usual.”

  “What in hell kind of crack is that?”

  “Sorry.” I lit a cigarette. It’s only … well … I didn’t expect to find you all dolled up like this.”

  “How am I supposed to go visit—in my jeans?”

  “Forget it.”

  “I can’t just sit here holding my head in my hands.”

  “Okay. Forget it. I’m sorry. Now simmer down.”

  We were in a small cluttered sitting room, actually an anteroom to the huge cavern of the studio proper. Beyond the studio was the bedroom and bath.

  “You’re going to see Penelope about five-thirty this afternoon,” I said. “Correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re going to inquire about this new dame he’s been running around with lately. Correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe that way some light can get thrown on this.”

  “I hope so. I just hope that Miss Arlington knows the person. She’s a marvelous woman but, in a way, feather-brained. She told me that Dad was dating this lady, and that he met her there at Miss Arlington’s, but she never mentioned her name. I just hope she knows, and if she knows, remembers. That Miss Arlington—”

  “Stop calling her Miss Arlington!”

  “I beg pardon?”

  “Stop being so formal just because you’re all dressed up in your bar-mitzvah suit. You’ve practically admitted sleeping with the old bag.”

  “Christ, Mr. Chambers, I’ve never seen you as jumpy as this.”

  “Yeah. Nerves. Sorry. Maybe you can be nice and calm about your father absconding with a hundred thousand dollars—”

  “Now I resent that.” His black eyes flamed.

  “Sorry again, kid. That’s the way I’ve been spending most of my day today, apologizing to everybody. Yes, I’m nervous, I’m scratchy as all hell. All that’s eating you is this business with your father, which is plenty, but at least you can control yourself. I’ve got that, and other things—which is a damned poor excuse for taking out my temper on others. Okay, from here on in, I’ll be nice, calm, and contained as befits a friend of your father, albeit a young friend; well, comparatively young.” I dumped my cigarette and sat down beside a jumble-topped, antique, knee-holed desk. I pushed the phone aside and rested an elbow. “Any way it works out at Penelope’s, you’ll call me at once. “Oh!” I slid off my elbow and snapped my thumb. “I’ll be at Alfred Surf’s on Park Avenue. His home. He’s in the phone book. That’s where you’ll call me. Check?”

  “Yes sir,” he said.

  “Good boy. Now sit down, won’t you, and let’s you and I do a bit of a recap.”

  “Yes sir.” He pulled up a rush-bottomed ladderback chair, turned it about, straddled it, rushed his bottom to the rush-bottom, laid his forearms on the top rung of the ladderback and clasped his fingers.

  “Yesterday, Thursday, at twelve o’clock noon, your father copped a walk with a hundred gees for company.”

  “So they tell us. I don’t believe it. But so they tell us.”

  “However, definitely, the evening before, Wednesday evening, he was here?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “What time?”

  “Seven o’clock. He was to stay at the bank to catch up with some paper work, and then come here. He arrived promptly at seven. You know my father. He’s a bug for punctuality.”

  “All right. What was his mood?”

  “I don’t know quite what you’re asking, Mr. Chambers.”

  “Well, we’re dealing with a man who, the next day, is supposed to have trotted away with a hundred thousand snappers. We both know your father, a meticulous, methodical man. Certainly, I think, larceny wouldn’t have been a carefree flightly impulse with him. If he was going to take his famous walk on Thursday, he would have at least plotted his path by Wednesday. Am I coming through?”

  He smiled, showing strong white teeth. “You bet, and you win. His mood was perfectly normal. He didn’t seem worried or upset, not in the least. He was tired, naturally, and somewhat disheveled, but remember he had come directly from work.”

  “What happened?”

  “He washed up, I made cocktails, we had a drink and chatted, and then we went to dinner.”

  “What time?”

  “I’d say seven-thirty.”

  “You said you ate at Whytes.”

  “Yes sir, Whytes, right here in Fifty-seventh.”

  “And there you had your discussion about Penelope Arlington?”

  “Argument would be a better word.”

  “He knew that you were taking money from her … er … that she was your patron—or is it patroness?—and it bothered him.”

  “That was the gist but I still say the gist was not the true point. If it were anybody else, I think he’d have laughed it off, or accepted it as the charity expected to be bestowed upon an arty sculptor he so despises.”

  “Don’t get him wrong kid. He doesn’t despise art or sculptors except when that combination happens to narrow down to three letters which spell out son—his son. To coin a phrase, fathers are funny. Or should I say, frusty?”

  “Yeah.” He was silent for a moment, unclasping his hands and rubbing them along the sides of the chair. Then grimly he said, “The point is, in
some cockeyed way, he was jealous. He had learned, perhaps from Penelope herself, that I was throwing her a jab here and there, amongst a troop of others, I’m certain, because I’m not one to kid himself. But, because it was I—it bothered him. He had been there himself, a long time ago, but nonetheless it bothered him … disturbed his rather precarious sense of values. It had nothing to do with morality or immorality—in the sexual sense my father is far from a moral man—but, bluntly, father and son screwing the same woman … it shook up the nice, precise balance that is so much a part of him. Perhaps … maybe … he disliked the fact that there could be a comparison … that one woman could judge both father and son … I mean, their capacity in the hay. You’re a man. You’ve been around. You know how it is.”

  “Yeah. I’m a man. I’ve been around. I know how it is.”

  “But as far as mood is concerned—no mood. No pressure. No nervousness. Not a man who was planning to steal a fortune the next day. Nothing like that.”

  I stood up and walked around. He remained glued to the rush-bottom but his eyes followed me. I said, “Then you two came back here?”

  “Yes.”

  “When? What time would you say?”

  “Oh, about nine-ish. We talked some more.”

  “Still arguing?”

  “No. That sort of got closed out. We chatted—my work, politics, some of the shows on Broadway—and then at a quarter to ten —I remember that definitely: he looked at his watch and I looked at mine—at a quarter to ten he suddenly went into action, he moved fast, in a hurry. He showered, shaved, changed, and got out.”

  “He what, what, what, and what?”

  “You know that Dad keeps changes of clothes here.”

  “Sure I know. But I didn’t know that he went off on a date last night. He did, didn’t he?”

  “Oh, he did. Whether or not it was a business appointment or a gal-date, I don’t know. All I do know is that when he saw what time it was, he sure got galvanized. He rushed everything, in a great big hurry.”

  “Business date or gal-date, he didn’t want to be late. You know your father. What had he been wearing?”

  “Brown suit, tan shirt, brown tie, brown shoes? He left them all scattered about for me to collect and put away.”

  “And what did he change to? Do you remember?”

  “Sure. A charcoal-grey suit, a white button-down shirt, a black knit tie, and black shoes.”

  “That doesn’t clue us to whether it was a man-date or a gal-date, does it?”

  “Nope.”

  “You hung his stuff away?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “In the closet in the bedroom.”

  “Let’s have a look-see. Come on, move your ass, boy.”

  We went together, past the clay and the putty and the plaster of Paris and the finished and unfinished statues in the studio, into the bedroom where he brought out, from the closet, a neatly-hung lightweight wrinkled brown suit: jacket, vest, and trousers. All became more wrinkled as I yanked them from the hanger and examined them. Charles R. Medford sure had been in a hurry; he had failed to transfer four items from the lightweight-brown to the charcoal-grey, all of course unimportant to wherever the hell he had been going. The pockets of the lightweight-brown disgorged, aside from accumulated tufts of lint: one small comb, one packet of heartburn pellets, one fine linen handkerchief, and one little red-leather appointment book. I tossed comb, pellets, and handkerchief, in that order, to Jack Medford, but I pounced upon the little red-leathered booklet as though it were a little red-headed hooklet who was trying to duck out before earning her fee. I scrambled the pages, egged by a stir of hope, until I arrived at a souffle of script on the page Wednesday June Thirteenth. Two innocent soft-boiled inscriptions pancaked up to meet my allegedly hard-boiled eye: J. M. at studio, 7 P.M. and coddled beneath that F. N. at Waldorf, 11 P.M.

  J. M.’s chin was nestled over my shoulder as I made the point with index finger. “Do you know who is F. N.?”

  “I have no idea,” he said.

  Hurriedly I rustled the pages, looking backward. There were many F. N. notations but on March twenty-ninth there was a ball-pointed indentation: Frankie Nigle at Waldorf, 8 P.M. and on April sixteenth there was a pencilled reminder Frankie Nigle at 515 Fifth, 12:15 P.M.

  “Did he ever mention this guy Frankie?” I said.

  “Never.”

  “F. N. figures for this Frankie Nigle whoever he is, don’t you think?”

  “I do.”

  “You and me both.”

  “Mr. Chambers, do you think these appointments were for the lobby of the Waldorf, something like that, or do you think the guy lives there?”

  “We can find that out fast enough.”

  I pocketed the appointment book, trotted with him trailing me to the sitting room, but neither of us sat. I used the phone and called the Waldorf and said, “I’d like to talk to Frankie Nigle, please.”

  “Just one moment, please.” I got the usual jiggles and then a deep masculine voice said, “Desk.”

  “Frankie Nigle?”

  “Sorry, sir, the party is no longer with us.”

  “Checked out?”

  “That is correct, sir.”

  “Could you tell me when the party checked out?”

  “If you’ll hold on for a moment, sir.” I held on for three minutes and then the voice returned. “Checked out on Thursday morning, sir.”

  “Leave a forwarding address?”

  “No, sir, no forwarding address.”

  “Thank you.” I hung up, hoisted the phone book, and checked for a Nigle at 515 Fifth Avenue. There was no Nigle at 511 Fifth Avenue. I called Information and asked for a Nigle at 515 Fifth Avenue. “What first name, sir?” said Information.

  “Frank.”

  “Just one moment, sir.” One hundred and twenty moments later she came back to me and said, “Sorry, sir, there is no Frank Nigle listed at that address. We have a Nigle Realty Company for that address, though. Is the spelling N-I-G-L-E?”

  “That’s the spelling.”

  “Would you want that number, sir?”

  “How come there’s no Nigle Realty Company listed in the phone book?”

  “It’s a recent listing, sir. Too late for the present phone book. Do you wish the number?”

  “I wish.”

  She gave me the number and I called it. There was no answer. I called it again. There was no answer. I hung up and the phone rang. I said, “There’s one of your impatient customers again.”

  Jack Medford took up the receiver, said, “Hello,” said, “Yes he’s here,” and gave it to me.

  “Hello,” I said to the mouthpiece.

  “Chambers?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mike Peabody. Like I got messages which said urgent.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Where the hell do you think I am?”

  “You home?”

  “Well, natch.”

  “Well, stay there.”

  “Who died and left you boss?”

  “It’s very important, Mike.”

  “For who? For you or for me?”

  “For both of us. Now just stay put, will you please?”

  “Sure. Why not? I got no other plans.”

  “Fine. Don’t change your plans. I’ll be right down.”

  I hung up, waved bye-bye to Medford, and took off.

  SEVEN

  THE BRITTANY on West Eighth in the Village was a rugged old-timer remodeled by our chrome-minded wizards of architecture with such modern innovations as self-service elevators up front so that a guy could sneak in his gal for a roll in the hay without impairing morals of the desk-clerk in the rear. It was fifteen stories high, dull beige on the outside and bright tinsel on the inside, with a wide lobby that featured tubular chairs for tubular people, dehydrated divans, spurious marble walls made of venal vinyl, a checkered floor of linoleum tiles so slippery it could have doubled for a hockey rink, piped-in m
usic that even a pie-eyed Pied Piper would have considered too piffling to pipe at his rats, and the usual fluorescent lighting, ubiquitous in our time, created by some vindictive inventor determined to tint upon human flesh the purply discoloration of diseased entrails. Why in all hell we have so long meekly submitted to the ghastly iniquity of fluorescent lighting—which taints even our most succulent foods with the greenish-cold poisonous lavender of septic-tank putrefaction—shall remain, until the inevitable fluorescent revolution, one of the major mysteries bulwarking the stolid conformity of this our generation of conformance.

  Quitting the creaky chrome-adorned elevator on the sixth floor, I trod a threadbare carpet along a long narrow corridor, flanked at each end by a telephone booth, to Suite 606 where I punched the button, listened to strident three-toned chimes (which did not come with the room-rent: for chimes the tenant had to chip in), waited impatiently patient until at length the door was swung open by Mike the Pea who, like Atlas in the ads, was dressed in nothing but a pair of bulging elastic briefs.

  “Hi,” he said unenthusiastically.

  “What are you costumed for?” I said. “First prize at a drag ball at a fairy convention?”

  “Frig you,” he said. “I dress like I please. I was resting, relaxing.”