Gentle Murderer (12 page)

“What time does the show come on?” he asked the bartender.

“Any time now. Any time at all.”

A lugubrious patron on the next bar stool eyed the detective. “You from out of town?”

“Nope. Born and raised here.” Goldsmith sipped his drink. He could have done nicely without conversation.

“Then how come you don’t know when the floor show starts?”

“They neglected that in my education.”

“Ha!” the man said, shoving his glass to the bartender. He turned to Goldsmith. “Did you go to college?”

“Nope.”

“Ah,” the drunk said wisely, “that accounts for it. The only damn thing I learned there—never miss a floor show. But they also taught me to be careful I wasn’t the one who gave the floor show.” He weighed each word carefully. “Made a solitary drinker of me.” Suddenly he grabbed Goldsmith’s arm. “Hey, get a load of that flaxen doll. Oh hell; she’s gone.”

Even as the man was speaking, Goldsmith caught sight of the woman before she ducked back behind the drapes. “You’ll see her,” he said. “That’s Liza Tracy.”

“The one in the picture upstairs? Naw. The picture’s a kid.”

“Retouching,” Goldsmith said.

“Little Liza looks like she’s had all the retouching she can stand. Don’t they have any fresh ones in New York?”

Goldsmith sighed. He was very tired. “The shipment was late this week.”

The head waiter herded the patrons back against the walls, and the orchestra leader took the microphone to the center of the floor. A spotlight picked him up, and tried out a variety of color gelatins on him. Meanwhile the pianist improvised sweet and melancholy tunes, the themes of each reaching farther back through the years.

The drunk chuckled. He held his hands out and moved them slowly together. “He makes me feel just like Alice in Wonderland.”

Goldsmith laughed. As the drunk described it, he understood the feeling perfectly. The varying lights heightened the illusion. “He’s setting the mood for Liza. You’re supposed to be getting nostalgic.”

“If he doesn’t stop soon, I won’t be here. I was in short pants when that tune was popular. Was Liza around then?”

“She was probably getting her first big break—in some speakeasy.”

“Holy mother. I take back what I said about the retouching. When I get to be her age, I want to go to her barber.”

Stories and imitations from the master of ceremonies began the show. He warmed up the crowd and then introduced in turn a folk singer on a high stool, three Calypso singers, a boy who made baby-talk on the harmonica. The floor was completely darkened then. A trombone sounded mournfully, its cry heightening as a blue spotlight shivered across the floor and trembled on the drapes. Liza Tracy slid from behind the black curtain and made her sequined entrance on a high note. The applause rippled while she held it. She rolled the blues and her hips from one table to the next. There was gravel in her low notes and the brittleness of ice in the high ones. She worked hard. So did the audience, never quite with her for all their heartiness. When she was done they applauded a beautiful memory, and if it wasn’t quite the memory of Liza Tracy, it was one of someone like her. As soon as she was off they clamored for a quick round of drinks.

“That’s something that was and ain’t no more,” the drunk said profoundly. “They should have left it in the picture frame. Excuse me.” He made his way to the rest room.

Goldsmith waited until the dance floor was crowded. Then he pushed through to the m.c. “I’d like to see Miss Tracy,” he said. “Where’s her dressing room?”

“Why don’t you set her up to a drink? I tell you, boss, she’d love it. Not too many. She’s got to go on again. But a couple of drinks, you know. Morale. Right out where people can see she’s human. They’re scared of her.”

“I’d rather talk to her first in her dressing room.”

“Okay, boss. But you’ll find it chummy back there.”

It was chummy. She shared one small room with the Calypso trio. She came to the door when the m.c. called her.

“Thanks,” Goldsmith said. He waited until the m.c. left. “I’d like to buy you a drink, Miss Tracy. Up the street.”

“How far up the street?”

“You can name it.”

She weighed the offer for a few seconds. “Give me ten minutes.”

The detective collected his hat and waited for her at the entrance. He waved at the drunk who had returned to the bar, and wondered what he would think seeing them leave together. If he ever met the guy again he thought it would be fun to tell him Liza was his sister.

Miss Tracy came and Goldsmith tipped his hat to the drunk and opened the door for Liza. Her high heels clacked up the steps ahead of him. She had nice legs, he noticed.

Not until they were settled in the booth of a near-by tavern did she say a word except “Scotch” to the bartender as they passed. She downed the drink as soon as it was served. Goldsmith made a remark about the show having been an experience. She gave him a dirty look. When he poured his drink into her glass she accepted it.

“You wouldn’t believe it,” she said then, “I’ve been playing that hole for a week and there wasn’t a bastard in the place offered to buy me a drink.”

“I’m buying you a drink,” Goldsmith said, motioning the waiter to serve them again.

“Did I say you were a bastard?”

“No. But I’m expecting it.”

She stroked her flaxen hair. The drunk had been right. She was wearing all the makeup she could take.

“You a cop?”

“Yes.”

“I figured that.” She picked up the fresh drink. “Here’s to the taxpayers. I hope they’re buying.”

“So do I,” Goldsmith said. “When was the last time you saw Dolly Gebhardt, Miss Tracy?”

There was not even an extra flutter to her eyelashes. “How’d you find me?”

“It wasn’t easy.”

“What did you do, find my old number in her place?”

“A very old one.”

“I move a lot. Restless.”

He nodded. “You were the only woman in her book except a masseuse.”

“A masseuse,” she repeated, turning the empty glass around in her fingers. A masseuse was not the kind of luxury she could afford. Goldsmith figured she was weighing Dolly’s career against her own.

“When did you get to know her?” he tried gently.

“We were both in the line in one of the Scandals,” she said then. “That was the end of the ’20s. 1930 maybe. She was fresh from the sticks. Isn’t her old man a son-of-a-bitch?”

“Her father? Maybe it’s harder on him this way.”

“Like hell. With the crust he’s got he could sit on a hot stove. I’ll tell you one thing, mister—there was none of him in Dolly. She had a heart the size of a battleship.” She pointed a green fingernail at him. “And don’t ever let ’em tell you she made her money easy. She made it hard and spent it easy.”

“I’ve just about reached that conclusion myself,” Goldsmith prompted.

Miss Tracy nodded, her mouth bitter.

“I imagine a lot of kids down on their luck got a lift from her,” he tried again.

“A lot more than showed up for her funeral. Looking for an angle on one of them?”

“Maybe.” Goldsmith offered her a cigarette and lit it for her. “But not necessarily. You see, Miss Tracy …”

“Liza,” she interrupted. “Tracy’s not my own name anyway.”

“You see, Liza, when it comes to murder, or any other crime for that matter, there are two people involved: the murderer and his victim. In a way, the victim has to co-operate with the murderer …”

“I get you,” Liza said. “You want to get out of me who she was co-operating with.”

Goldsmith smiled. “Well, I’d listen to any ideas you have. But what I thought we might talk about is Dolly. I’d like to know something about her—the kind of stuff a friend could tell me.”

“I didn’t see her much. We weren’t the visiting kind. She wasn’t, anyway. The truth is I didn’t see her for maybe fifteen years after the Scandals closed that year. I got out to Hollywood myself. Remember the Follies of 1932? I guess you wouldn’t. How old were you then?”

“Second year of high school. I remember them.”

“I was in that. Not much, but it got me seen. I was in the Broadway Review of 1936, too. In the picture, that is. Broadway wasn’t reviewing nothing then, unless breadlines maybe.”

“Where was Dolly then?”

“I don’t know. Trying to make a buck. We wrote letters for a while, kidding one another. In the big time. The letters petered out when we lost our starch. During the war I got into a camp show. I pulled a dirty trick. I got so homesick when I saw New York, I cut the show. I got some work then. I took up singing. At that date, I took up singing. The way I come up since—Eighth Avenue. I’ll be back there. You don’t come up that way. You go down there. Easy and down. I’ll be home for Christmas, like they say. A drunken agent thought up this stunt. Not bad. But you got stones in your head if you think you’re going uptown with what I got. There’s a lot of things wrong with me, but stones in my head I don’t have. Can the city stand another drink?”

“I think so.” He emptied his own glass and reordered. “Where did you meet up with Dolly again?”

“In front of the Astor Hotel. Just walking by like that. We did a double-take and fell all over each other. You know, long lost buddies.”

“I know.”

“Then I was up there at her place a few times, every day almost for a couple of weeks, and we cooled off again. Some dump she had. Steps down into the living room, a marble bathroom …”

“I’ve gotten to know it pretty well,” Goldsmith said.

She looked at him as though she realized for the first time who he was. “You would, wouldn’t you? I mean, her getting killed like that.” She shuddered.

“I would. Did you ever happen to meet any of her friends during your visits?”

“A couple. Nice guys. I don’t remember them much. I haven’t been near there in maybe a year.”

“Young fellows, weren’t they?”

“Kind of. Not kids if that’s what you’re getting at. Dolly wasn’t taking …”

“I didn’t mean that,” he interrupted. “You wouldn’t remember their names?”

“No. I got no memory at all for names.”

“Would you remember their faces again if you saw them?”

“Maybe. No guarantees.”

“Did she tell you about any of them?”

“Why should she?”

Goldsmith shrugged. “You had to talk about something. They’d be natural enough. Say one of them was a quiet little guy, big sad eyes. Say he was having a tough time, a writer maybe. She might have let him come up there when he had no place else to go. Possible?”

Liza looked at him. “Yeah. Possible and then some. Where’d you pick him up?”

“I haven’t even met him. I’d like to. I don’t even know his name.”

“Sad Sack. That’s what I called him.”

“What did Dolly call him?”

“I’m telling you the truth. I don’t know. Jim, or some easy name like that. Could be Tom, Dick or Harry. A hard name I’d remember maybe. He was sitting there one day when I went up. Shivering like a wet pup. She sent him out to the kitchen to make himself some coffee. ‘You think we’re in a tough racket,’ she says to me … meaning show business. ‘That kid’s trying to sell poetry.’ He didn’t look like no kid to me, but he sure acted one. ‘Poetry,’ I says to her. ‘I thought that went out with Shakespeare.’ ‘It sounds real pretty,’ she says. ‘I don’t know what it means half the time, but I figure it won’t do me a bit of harm to know some poetry. It’s like knowing French.’ Dolly was going around with some mighty elegant people. She was always trying to improve herself, poor kid.”

“Did you talk with the man at all, Liza?”

“Nope. The funny thing, he didn’t come back in the room. I remember smelling the coffee after a while. I said I wouldn’t mind if he’d bring us in a cup. ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘he’s gone. Comes and goes like a rainy day.’”

“And you never saw him again?”

“Never. I asked her about him a couple of times. ‘He’s around,’ she says.”

“How long ago was it that you met him, Liza?”

“A couple of years. More. It was when that silly song about Nature Boy was popular.”

“Liza, have you got any idea just what the relationship was between them?”

She looked at him a moment. “How do you mean?”

“Was he in love with her—attracted to her?”

She gave a vulgar laugh. “I get you. Lord, no. As far as I can figure it out, he was Dolly’s pet charity. Maybe he read poetry at some fancy shindig. She went to the damnedest things.”

Goldsmith pocketed his cigarettes. “Do you think he knew the business she was in?”

Liza thought about that. “I don’t know. I’ll tell you this, it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that he didn’t. I remember her saying once, ‘That screwy kid wants me to go out with him listening to bird calls—at five in the morning.’ Imagine. Five a.m. in Central Park. That’s where I got the Nature Boy notion.”

Goldsmith laid a bill on the table and the waiter came for it immediately. “I’d offer you a nightcap, Liza …”

“I know,” she said, sliding out of the booth. “I got another show and Simon Legree tipped you off. That buzzard. He pinches my cheeks. ‘You little tippler, you,’ he says. Like it would make a difference in that flea trap. I’m going to be almost glad to get back where I belong. The smell of perfume in that place turns my stomach.”

“I’m much obliged to you, Liza,” Goldsmith said, collecting his change.

He walked her to the door of the club. “You were kind of down on your own luck when you met Dolly again, weren’t you, Liza?”

She looked at him coldly. “Not that far down. See you around.”

He watched her through the door and waited a few minutes on the street. Then he went down to the club again himself. The drunk was gone but the master of ceremonies was at the bar.

“Brought little Liza back on time, I see,” he remarked. “She’s a sweet kid.”

“Yeah. Who’s her agent, chum? I like her act.”

The m.c. looked at him. Obviously he was trying to figure out who he was and whether or not he was on the level.

“I mean it,” Goldsmith said. “Who’s her agent?”

“Dave Albright. Ever hear of him?”

“Maybe. I’ll find him. Thanks.”

“Try right here after the midnight show tomorrow. That’s when she gets paid off.”