Dead in a Bed Page 7

  “Don’t you believe in circulation for all of the body while you’re relaxing?”

  “I circulate like I please and if it don’t suit you, blow. I didn’t invite you, remember?”

  “I remember.”

  “If you want to come in, come in.”

  “I want to come in.”

  “Come in.”

  I came in.

  Suite 606 was a suite in name only. It was one room with a harwood floor and a hodge of furniture podged indiscriminately. It was part bedroom, part living room, and an electric broiler made it part kitchen. Some of the furniture was excellent, some of it lousy. One of the lousy pieces was a rickety dresser on top of which was a silver tray upon which stood many bottles of various potables, glasses, and a cocktail shaker.

  “Like a drink?” he said.

  “No, thank you.”

  “Mind if I do?”

  ‘Help yourself.”

  ‘Well thanks large,” he said. “Nice of you to give me permission. You sure you don’t want? I’m going to mix up martinis.”

  “I’m on the wagon.”

  “You’re full of shit. You’re a snot that thinks he’s too good to drink with me. You hate my guts, don’t you?”

  “I don’t like them.”

  “Well, mutual. Just remember I didn’t invite you.”

  “I didn’t come for the pleasure of your company, I assure you.”

  “Oh you assure me,” he mimicked in falsetto. “Well let me assure you, pal. The faster you get the hell out of here the better I like it. Now what’s so urgent and make it quick.”

  “You’d better have your drink first.”

  “Yeah, maybe I better. It’ll take the bad taste out of my mouth—that you put there.”

  “A fist might accomplish that better than a martini.”

  He turned to me squarely, his grin wide, and beckoned with a finger. “Why don’t you step up and try it, pal? I am always happy to oblige a guest.”

  I was tempted but I passed. “Some other time,” I said.

  “You want to know something, Mr. Peeper. I think you’re a guy with a big mouth and no guts, that’s what I think. I think you got a reputation for being a shtahrker but I think you made that reputation with the mouth, not with the hands. That’s what I think.”

  “You’ve got a right to think,” I said. I needed him—there was no sense antagonizing him.

  “What I mean, you’re a dog, a good-looking dog, but a yellow dog, a yellow dog with a great big mouth. That’s what I mean, Mr. Chambers.”

  I swallowed hard but I held on tight. You give a pig a pinky and he slobbers all over your arm. This little piggy was spewing in my face. I was dying to truss him up for market but there are certain small pleasures that one must forego in the overall interests of the serious work. So I swallowed again and I said, “Enough with the muscles, hey, pal? Go make your drink and let’s have our talk. We’ll save the muscles for another time.”

  “Yeah, always another time.” His contempt was complete. His smirk was triumphant. He swaggered past me, saying, “You sure you won’t join me in a drink, pal? It helps the courage.”

  I had another answer but I stubbornly stuck to the previous one. “Thanks, but I’m on the wagon.”

  I tore my mind away from wanting to tear into him. I thought about ice, ice for the chilling of martinis. What about ice cubes? There was no refrigerator in the room. Would he produce the ice cubes from a drawer of the dresser? Cooling out thinking of ice cubes, I watched him open the door of an immense closet that was almost as big as the room. It was filled to bursting with expensive clothes some of which he moved aside to reveal a low, square, compact refrigerator. In a one-room suite like 606, every inch of space had to be utilized: there was probably a stove in the toilet and a horizontal wine-rack beneath the bed. That picture brought a chuckle and the chuckle was good for me: I began to laugh at myself for letting a tick like this Mike get under my skin.

  “What’s the joke?” he said, coming out of the closet with a tray of cubes.

  “Why do you live in a dump like this?” I said. “A guy like you can afford better?”

  “Because I like it,” he said at the dresser, pulling the lever of the tray and making the ice jump. “It’s home base. I know the owner, I know everybody here. I wouldn’t have to pay rent for a year and nobody’d bother me with what I’ve got on them.”

  “You even use blackmail for room rent, eh, pal?”

  “I thought you were going to be nice, Mr. Peeper?”

  “I’m trying to be nice. It’s flattering, what I said. It’s just that you don’t belong in a dump like this.”

  “Look, every guy has got his ups and downs. When I’m up I check into a fancy hotel and live like a prince, but this place I never give up. It’s always good to have home base.” He plunked ice into the shaker, added vermouth and gin, and stirred. “Sit down,” he said. “Take a load off your feet.”

  I chose one of the good pieces in that strangely furnished room, an excellent traditional, a Louis XV chair with ormolu armrests, beside which was a marble side-table centered with a large flat circular onyx ashtray. I lit a cigarette, leaned back, deposited the burnt match in the tray, and then reared up as though goosed by a Louis XV hornet equipped with an ormolu stinger. The onyx ashtray contained, aside from my brunt match, a card with which I was familiar, a fine parchment calling card simply engraved: PENELOPE ARLINGTON.

  “Do you know Penelope Arlington?” I said as lightly as I could skim it.

  “What business is that of yours?” he said. He was straining the martini into an oversized cocktail glass.

  “I happen to know her myself.”

  “Big deal,” he said.

  “It’s only I noticed her card here on the table.”

  “So keep your nose out of my cards.”

  “Don’t tell me that she’s come calling on you here?”

  “That crazy I’m not.”

  “They tell me she’s out of town.”

  “So she’s out of town. Why are you bugging me with Penelope Arlington?”

  “Nothing. I’m just surprised that you two know each other.” There was no reason for me to be surprised. Mike the Pea was young and handsome and that was sufficient passport into the hot kingdom of the cool Miss Arlington. “A beautiful woman, isn’t she?” I said.

  “So? I know plenty of beautiful women.” He sipped off the top of the brimming cocktail.

  “Do you happen to know Jack Medford too?”

  “Yeah, I know him. I met him through Penny—”

  “Penny is it? Real cozy.”

  “I met him through Penny and as far as I’m concerned you can change him up for two dimes and a nickel. You can have him, he’s your type. The snotty snotnose type, you know what I mean?” He settled on a wicker settee, quaffed deeply of the martini, put it down on a walnut coffee table beside a porcelain cigarette-box, opened the box, drew out a cigarette, lit it with a tall gold lighter from off the coffee table, puffed, and lay his arms out along the back of the settee.

  He was a handsome man, touching thirty now, blue-eyed and golden-haired, his body smooth and hairless and sun-browned. His legs were powerful, his chest deep, and the biceps of his arms were wrought thickly enough to wreak many harms the recipient of one of which was more than likely to be I. Sooner or later I was going to tussle with this cocky little bastard and from the look of him he was going to be tough to handle. Fair enough. I have the typically American weakness of going soft when the opponent appears to be a sucker. We get caught up in our sympathies and then we catch a haymaker to the jaw. This guy was a prig (and you may pronounce that G as hard as you like) who had rubbed me the wrong way for a long time. When the later arrived at the sooner and we were finally squared away for a round of bout, I had no intention of going soft, and from the sprightly contempt of his arrogant demeanor so convincingly supported by the bulging muscles, he had no intention of permitting my intention to slacken in the least. Fair
enough.

  “Is that why you come here?” he said. “To converse about a puke-rich broad named Penny and a quiff-chasing crud named Medford? I mean if this is what you called up about like it’s so urgent …”

  “Hockin Chynik is urgent.”

  He was reaching for his martini but the reach was breached in mid-air. He eschewed the martini and chewed upon the cigarette. “Hockin Chynik?” he inquired mildly.

  “Remember Chynik?”

  “Like vaguely,” he said but a thespian he wasn’t. His bright blue eyes had more giveaway than one of those afternoon shows on television.

  “Mike, you’re a smart boy, smart enough to know how to duck in the clinches, and I’m going to throw this at you all together because you are a smart boy. Hockin Chynik, sprung from the can, has leaped directly into mischief.”

  “Mischief?”

  “Mischief, like murder.”

  “Murder?” His sigh was a teeter of involuntary tremolo. He bent and this time he made it to the martini, drinking noisily. The glass clattered back to the walnut coffee table and Mike the Pea, his attempt at bravado painful, said, “What in hell you talking about—murder?”

  “Last night, in one short rampage, friend Chynik blasted Maximilian Bartlett and broke the neck of Angelina Pisk. The cops are looking for him, and so am I. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Why here?” He was being a nice little boy. Muder sure scared him. Whom does murder not scare?

  “Now cut it out with the idiot questions, pal. Chynik was sprung two weeks ago and whom else would he contact than his true-blue bud? Now listen to me, Michael, and strain yourself to listen real hard. Once before in your life I asked you for cooperation, and because way down deep you’ve got a good streak of self-preservation, you cooperated. Now I’m asking again and I expect cooperation for the same damn reason.”

  “What’s my self-preservation got to do with this … with this new Chynik bit?” And for a moment a flicker of his former arrogance flamed again. “And how do I know you’re telling me the truth?”

  I pointed toward the phone. “Call Homicide. Ask for Detective-lieutentant Louis Parker. Ask for anybody. Ask about Bartlett and Pisk.”

  He looked toward the phone, looked back to me, drew a last puff on the cigarette and killed it. “What sense would there be in you kidding me?”

  “No sense.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to know where Chynik is. I want you to play along with me all the way, else you’re going to play with the law, or play with Chynik, or play with both.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “My pleasure to explain. With the law, like this. You hold out on his whereabouts, you’re an accessory after the fact. With murder that’s serious and the law plays rough. All your life you’ve been smart enough to steer clear of the rough deals and I’m depending on you to continue that course. With Chynik, like this. Once upon a time you ratted on him—”

  “Me? Ratted? To who?”

  “To me. You fingered him for me on that Jennifer Moore job where he finally got caught up with his pants down. Or have you conveniently forgotten?”

  “That wasn’t ratting. That was—”

  “It doesn’t interest me what euphemism you care to lay on it. The point is—you ratted on Hockin Chynik and Hockin Chynik doesn’t know you ratted on him.”

  “Because you promised—”

  “And I kept my promise. Now I’ll make another promise. Unless right now you cooperate with me—but all the way—and for the same old reason—self-preservation, which seems to make it excusable—unless you cooperate, I promise, so help me, that I’ll get word to Hockin Chynik just who put him on that spot, just who ratted on him, just who served as catapult for flinging him into the can for five long years. You know what happens then?”

  He was silent.

  I pulled a last puff on the butt of my cigarette and smothered it in the onyx ashtray. “Chynik killed Bartlett and Pisk because of their complicity in his commitment. He’s probably looking for me for the same reason, which is one of the reasons I’m looking for him. But once he learns that you were Number One, brother, you’ll be the real Number One on his agenda. He’ll either murder you or you’ll have to murder him—either way, you’re a dead man. So, once again, Mr. Peabody—all personal dislikes to one side—I’m appealing to your better judgment. Either you talk to me, but real good, or I start talking all over this town—about who really stuck the umbrella into Hockin Chynik and opened it up.”

  The pallor that faded the tan of his suntanned cheeks was encouraging. The white ridge of excitement above his distended nostrils and the shallow-rapid noise of his quickened breathing added to my optimism.

  I gave him one last jolt and then hoped like hell.

  “I think that by now you know I keep my promises,” I said. “One more promise in the hopper. If you talk now, you’ll stay clean on this. Not one word from me—to anybody.”

  He hung a sick grin on his teeth. “Wow,” he said softly.

  “Yeah, wow,” I said.

  “Each time it’s like you got me over a barrel.”

  “There’ll be other times.”

  “I can’t wait,” he said, unconsciously clenching his hands.

  “Mayhap some delightful mayhem when we finally tangle,” I said. “But, temporarily I trust, we’re going to have to postpone our personal pleasures.”

  “You talk with too many goddamned words.”

  “Okay, then I’ll talk these two final words—You talk!” I leaned back on Louis XV and resumed the hoping like hell.

  Mike the Pea prodded the porcelain box for a cigarette and tensely scraped the gold lighter for fire. He hammered smoke at his lungs, cocked his head, and then shot his mouth off. “I was with him most of this morning which is why I wasn’t in when you were making them telephone calls about urgent. He’s a little short of loot and we were figuring angles for the future.”

  “Like Penelope Arlington?”

  “Drop dead. You interested in Chynik or Arlington?”

  “Chynik.”

  “He went down to see his lawyer for an appointment at half past one. He’s due back at his apartment at two-thirty which is when I’m supposed to meet him there.”

  I looked at my watch. It was ten minutes to two. “Where’s this apartment?”

  “Two-seventy-three West Twenty-sixth. 3 G.”

  I stood up. “Forget your date with him. Forget it, forever.”

  “Yeah.” He sighed dispiritedly. “How about our date?”

  “What date?”

  “Once, when you don’t have me over a barrel.”

  “Oh, that’s coming, Michael, I promise, and you know me with promises.”

  “I’m anxious, Mr. Peeper.”

  “Me too, Mr. Peabody, except I hate wasting my time.”

  “I’m a waste of time?”

  “Naturally. What would I prove by pasting you around?”

  “Prove, maybe, that you’re a man.”

  “I’ve proved that, to me.”

  “But never to me.”

  “It’ll work out, Michael. That’s what I meant by the promise. I work this town and my side is the other side of your side. I’m expecting, now that you’re growing up, that I’ll be able to deliver the pasting in the normal course of business. Like that it won’t be a waste of time. Or else, if you’re as anxious as you say, maybe you ought to look me up.”

  “When the barrel-bit blows over, maybe I will. I owe you.”

  “I’ll be happy to have you. Now may I use your phone?”

  Somehow that sat him back on his settee. “Use,” he said.

  I called Kaja Knishey, a Yugoslav locksmith, with a store at Twenty-third and Eighth, told him I would pick him up in ten minutes, bade foul farewell to Mike the Pea, and hastened as they say along Madison Avenue, cab-wise (which in New York is crab-wise), to a taciturn genius named Kaja Knishey.

  EIGHT

  TO HUNT A shark you don
’t grab a Bikini and go out swimming with bleeding bait. You don’t tackle a tiger with the point of a boy-scout badge. You don’t whistle at a wolf, jape at a jackal, play footsie with a panther. Castanets won’t pacify a python and a string-tie won’t lasso a bull. What I mean—there’s a weapon for every beast, an offense for every defense, a plan, a scheme, an inchoate plotting for the ultimate chaos of whatever warfare no matter how infinitesimal the war. I was at war with Hockin Chynik and I was fighting fire with fire, pitting steel against steel.

  I was pitting Kaja Knishey against Hockin Chynik and I do not mean in the dissonance of nomenclature.

  Nothing fails like success, and Hockin Chynik, a successful burglar until five years in the can blew him up into murder, was now pawing at the edge of his nadir, and I had every intention of pushing him over, but I had no intention of going overboard with him. A form of finesse was required and the free-form of the redoubtable Kaja Knishey was eminently suited to the opening sequences of such requirement. If Hockin Chynik was a front-door man, illegal, Kaja Knishey was an all-door man, legal. And what Hockin Chynik had yet to tumble to about the tumblers of locks, Kaja Knishey had already forgotten.

  Kaja Knishey was a tiny man, spry at eighty, a bandy-legged bantam of cocky cockalorum, serene in the confidence of his especial genius, with twinkly eyes and wistful gum-gapped smile and a disconcerting habit of talking in monosyllables mostly limited to a laconic “Yah” or “No soap.” He was peerless at locks but cheerless as an opponent at the bargain table. His art would have earned him enviable stature as a satrap of the underworld but Kaja was militantly upperworld, a sturdy pinion of law and order one of whose minions, happily, he considered me.

  At his store, which was a dank narrow province of locks and keys and strange metallic contraptions on Twenty-third Street, he greeted me—my cab waiting outside—with an amiable tooth-spaced smile which, cannily, grew wider as I spluttered, “Kaj, come on, I’m in a hurry.”

  “Yah?” he breathed but stood rooted like a midget maple.

  “I’m in a hurry, Kaj.”

  “Yah-yah,” he breathe-breathed but stood rooted-rooted like the selfsame maple-maple.

  “I’ve got a couple of doors I want you to open, Kaj.”