Goodey's Last Stand: A Hard Boiled Mystery (Joe Goodey) (13 page)

“I shall begin”—his right forefinger became a scalpel—“with an in
cision here.” He traced a semicircular line along the lower edge of Irma’s nipple. Her face didn’t show a thing, but I could feel the blade bite. “This, of course, will enable me to insert the implant which will result in augmentation of the breast. Not just augmentation, but a result so totally lifelike that the patrons of The Jungle, you, or even Miss Springler will not be conscious that her breasts are not totally her own.”

Doc Irving was really getting into it. He was going to dazzle me with science. “You see, Mr.
Goodey,” he continued, confident of my unswerving attention, “the crucial element of such an operation is the character and consistency of the implant used. In the past a number of substances have been used with mixed results, among them silastic sponge, saline solution, gel sacs, microporous sponge. One of the earliest methods was to use excess subcutaneous fat from the patient’s own body.” He smiled winningly. “But I can’t see that Miss Springler has much excess body fat, can you?” I shook my head gravely, trying not to feel too much like a peeping Tom or a cattle inspector.

“A recent trend,” he went on, “has been to use liquid silicone. This has produced some spectacular results, but it is extremely doubtful medically. Silicone in that form has an unfortunate tend
ency to travel and can be absorbed into certain organs with serious results, including carcinoma.” At that word Irma grimaced involuntarily, and I didn’t feel so well myself.

“I myself have never used silicone,” Irving said. “And in recent months I have perfected a completely new type of implant which I will employ in my work on Miss
Springler.” He tried to look wise and secretive. “Of course, I can’t reveal the exact nature of this implant, but I can assure you that the technique and material I will use is far in advance of anything the field has yet seen. Confidentially, I have every hope of getting into the textbooks with this one. I—” “That’s great,” I interrupted, “but it doesn’t really help me much with what I’ve come to see you about. I’m not a measurable distance closer to finding out who killed Tina D’Oro.”

The mad doctor looked sheepish, but Irma
Springler came out of her trance and snapped, “Who asked you to find out who killed Tina?” She was getting back into the tailored blouse, and quite gracefully too.

“That’s none of your business,” I said politely, “but if you’re just about finished here, I’ve got some questions for you about Tina
D’Oro.”

We locked eyes for a moment. Then something softened in her hard gaze, and she said, “I’m through here right now, and if you’re driving toward North Beach, we can talk.” She turned to Irving. “Are you all set to begin on Monday morning, Doctor?”

“All set, Miss Springler,” he said, smoothly professional, “if you are. I’ll see you here at ten in the morning.”

“I’ll be here.” She was headed out of the laboratory, and I couldn’t think of any reason not to follow her. The doc tagged along too.

“You’ll be around, Doctor,” I asked him, “in case I can think of any intelligent questions to ask you?”

“I’ll be around, Mr.
Goodey,” he said. “I live at the top of this building. I’ll try very hard to think of something to help you in your inquiries, but my relationship with Miss D’Oro was strictly professional.”

“You do that,” I said. “I’d like to come around sometime and see the rest of that film.”

He gave me a warning frown, but Irma Springler was heading out of his office door, and I didn’t have much time to feel gauche. She was quick on the stairs, and outside near the brass plate I caught up with her, looking slightly impatient. The big door closed behind us.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said a bit more friendly. “That place gives me the creeps.”

I walked over to the Morris parked at the curb, and Irma drifted along at my side. She slid quite willingly into the cracked leather passenger seat. I got in behind the steering wheel and waited for an opening in the flow of Saturday evening traffic.

“I’m sorry I was so snappy in there,” she said as I got the car out into the street. “The last few days have been hell for me.”

“Don’t apologize. I have a tendency to wade in, stomping all over people’s sensibilities. I’m cursed with a one-track mind. I should apologize to you. Do you feel up to answering a few questions while we drive, or would you rather wait?”

“Go ahead,” she said, letting her head rest against the seat back and nearly closing her eyes. “I want to help you all I can.”

By then I was past City College, and we joined the early dinner crowd on the freeway headed downtown. I pulled into the slow lane and drifted gently with the big trucks and old crocks like my own. “You were Tina’s best friend?” I asked.

“I think so,” she said. “Tina didn’t have many friends. I met her last autumn when a girl friend of mine brought her around, and Tina asked me if I’d do her hair.”

“You’re a hairdresser?”

“Not really. It’s a hobby of mine, and Tina claimed she’d never before found anybody who could do her hair just right. I didn’t believe her at first, but Tina had a way of getting what she wanted.”

“If you’re not a hairdresser, what do you do for a living?”

“Nothing,” she said, “right now, but until the end of May I was teaching at Marin Junior College.”

“Teaching what?”

“Basic English, history, a bit of sociology. Mostly to freshmen.”

“It’s a long way from Basic English to the stage of The Jungle,” I said, trying not to sound too scornful about it.

“Yes,” she said, and I thought she sounded rueful. Irma was silent for about half a dozen of those tall, arc-lighted poles along the James Lick Memorial Freeway. Then she spoke, and the light was so dim that I could barely catch her features out of the corner of my eye. “Look,” she said seriously, “can I trust you?”

Now, there was a good question. Could Irma Springler, teacher turned go-go dancer, trust Joe Goodey, ex-cop and would-be private detective? I hoped I hadn’t waited too long before I said: “I think so. All I want from you is information that might help me find out who murdered Tina.” That sounded altruistic, but it was true.

“That’s good,” she said, “because that’s all I want from you too. If you’re working for Phil Franks, I’m in trouble, because I have no in
tention of ever dancing for him at The Jungle. I want to find out who killed Tina, and I figure that the best way is from the inside.”

“You’ll even let Doc Irving try his magic formula on you?” I asked. That seemed to me to be going a bit far, even for a best friend.

“If I have to,” she said in a neutral tone. “But I think I can stall Irving for a while. Phil will be harder to handle, so I’ve got to work fast. We both want the same thing, Joe. Do you think we could work together?”

That was the best offer I’d had all day, which gives you an idea of the quality of the offers I’d been getting. Unless Irma killed Tina herself, she probably knew as much about the murder as I did. Which wasn’t very much. But I didn’t have much to lose.

“I don’t see why not,” I said. “I can’t tell you who I’m working for, and other than that I don’t know a hell of a lot more than you do. Probably less. But maybe we can do something together. Why don’t you start by telling me something I don’t know?”

“All right,” she said in a voice full of hidden aces, “I will. I know that Tina was having an affair with Mayor
Kolchik.”

This hot tidbit was supposed to make me fall out of the car and swallow my tongue. In order not to disappoint Irma too much, I managed a long, low whistle meant to convey the impression of surprise.

It didn’t.

“You knew that already,” she said accusingly, like a child whose riddle had flopped.

“You’re right,” I said. “But all the same it’s very interesting that you know it. How is that?”

“Tina had no secrets from me,” Irma said positively.

“She must have had at least one,” I said. “And that’s who was mad enough at her to stab her to death.”

“That’s what I can’t figure out,” Irma said, “unless...”

“Unless Tina did have some secrets from you,” I said. “Do you think it’s possible that she could have been running an entirely different game that you knew nothing about? How good an actress was Tina? For instance, could there have been another lover besides Kolchik? One she didn’t tell you about?”

The high beams of an oncoming car illuminated her face enough for me to see that Irma didn’t like the idea. Her face went rigid, and
the high cheekbones stood out in relief. Then the car’s light was gone.

“No,” she said in a voice that was calmer than her face had shown. “I’d swear it. The mayor was the only man in Tina’s life. If there’d been another, I’d have had to know.”

“What about Tony Scar?”

“What about who?” She wasn’t faking it.

“Tony Scarezza. He used to be a big man on the docks. He was Tina’s lover some years back. Did you know that she’d had a baby about fifteen years ago? Scarezza’s baby. And it died young over at Tina’s home in the East Bay?”

She was silent for a moment. Then Irma spoke: “You may have known Tina to talk to, Joe,” she said, “but one thing you didn’t know about her was that for Tina there was no yesterday, only today and tomorrow—mostly tomorrow. I didn’t know about the baby or this Tony Scar person because for Tina they didn’t exist. To Tina, yester
day was something you threw away with last night’s paper. She was through with it, and it didn’t matter.”

“What did matter to Tina?” I asked.

“Her career,” Irma answered after thinking carefully, “and her friends.”

“And who were her friends besides you?”

Irma had to think that one over hard. I let her do it in peace as we plowed toward downtown San Francisco. We were just negotiating the link with the Embarcadero when she said: “There weren’t any, really, I guess, unless you count Dr. Irving and maybe Phil Franks. But Dr. Irving was mostly concerned with keeping her body in shape. And Phil—I don’t know exactly what Phil was. Sometimes Tina talked about him fondly; other times he was just a money-grubbing fat man. Tina knew a lot of people at other clubs on the street, but no one I’d really call a friend. Maybe Kolchik was a friend. I don’t know.”

Neither did I, and I wasn’t getting much closer to finding out. It looked as if
Kolchik didn’t have any better eye for detectives than for girls. For all I knew, Johnny Maher had Tina’s killer hog-tied in the basement of city hall.

We rolled down the Broadway off ramp.

15

“Are you hungry?”
I asked Irma as we crept along in the tentative beginnings of what would later turn into the nightly traffic jam. “We could continue this over dinner.”

She agreed, and a few minutes later we were being seated in a rear booth at Hungry Joe’s by Mario, the headwaiter. Mario made up for being incredibly handsome by oozing an oily hospitality which always made me feel faintly in need of a steam cleaning.

“The veal tonight, m’sieur and m’selle,” he said, “is exquisite. Besides, I’ve been asked by the chef to move it if at all possible.” Save me from honest headwaiters. I told Mario to send us two Kahluas over crushed ice and promised to give the veal every consideration.

The drinks arrived, and I was about to beam back in on Irma with what I hoped would be pertinent questions. She’d gotten her nose
stuck into the short, chunky glass of dark-brown coffee liqueur. When she came up for air with a sliver of ice on her lower lip, I was all set with a sure-fire winner. But just then George, the barman, caught my eye with a fancy bit of cocktail bar semaphore. He looked as if he meant it.

“Sorry,” I said, pushing back from the table and standing up. “Somebody seems to need to talk to me.” I shoved my drink across
the table toward her. “If you feel dehydration setting in, try this. I’ll make it short.”              '

George, the younger brother of a big-league baseball star, fancied himself a celebrity by genetic association, like the third son of an earl. Just then he was busy dazzling a motherly type with his way with a gin fizz, so I leaned against the polished oak bar and mar
veled. But quietly.

The fizz delivered and an unmotherly smile returned
, George turned to me. “Hey, Joe,” he said, “is it true that you’re no longer a cop? That you’re going to be a private detective?”

“Am a private detective, George,” I corrected. “Am. And I’ve got the papers to prove it.”

“Gee, that’s too bad,” he said, giving the bar an ellipsoidal sweep with a damp rag.

“How do you mean?”

“Now you won’t be able to put your drinks on the tab. Mario won’t deadhead anybody but the real thing.”

“I’l
l try to survive the blow. Is that what you frantically signaled me over here to tell me?” I started to push myself away from the bar.

“Oh, no,” he said. ‘That’s not it. It’s something more important. Marley Phillips wants to see you.”

Marley Phillips. In a B movie, that would have been a great spot for some theme music. Something with kettledrums. Instead, the only noise was the tinkle of ice cubes and the rustle of lies brushing up against broken promises.

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“He sent one of his mugs around this afternoon. An old guy running on one lung and strong hair oil. He nearly passed out on the stairs.”

“Did he say what Phillips wanted?”

“The way he was puffing and blowing,” George said, “he was lucky to get that much out. That lad is a candidate for an iron lung. Are you going to see Phillips?”

“Maybe. But thanks for the message anyway.” It doesn’t pay to tell bartenders too much. I went back to the booth where Mario loomed over Irma like a walking lamp.

“I’m sorry,” I told Irma, “but I’ve got to go see someone. It may be important.” Mario turned his back discreetly, but his ears kept twitching. “You have dinner, and we’ll meet later…say, at The Jungle at ten o’clock?”

“Okay,” she agreed. “I’ll see you there. In the meantime is there anything I can do”—she flicked her eyes at Mario’s attentive back— “you know?”

“Not really,” I said in a low voice. “Just keep your eyes and ears open and try to remember anything that might help.” Without raising my voice or changing my tone, I said: “Mario, give this nice lady a good dinner. Anything but the veal.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, whirling around as if on ball bearings
to gracefully take money from my hand. “I’ll take good care of m’selle.”

I was sure of that.

The car parker at the Mark Hopkins reluctantly accepted the Morris, and the doorman let me pass with no more than a look which said he didn’t think much of my wardrobe, haircut, or career prospects. George had told me Phillips’ suite number, so I gave the ramrod-stiff clerk behind the desk a miss and headed for the bank of elevators. I could feel his eyes on my back.

The elevator was soundless enough, but it stopped with a nasty jerk which brought back painful echoes of an old football injury to
my left knee. I wondered whether I had sufficient grounds for a lawsuit. The closing door caught me wondering, and I had to strong-arm my way into the eighteenth-floor corridor.

The Mark Hopkins is a plush hotel. Not tacky-prefab posh like some of the newer high-rise mausoleums in San Francisco, but full of character like a sable coat with a moth-eaten lining. The corridor carpet wasn’t an ankle-grabber, but its well-kept, timeworn veneer hinted that it had been trodden on by some of the quality.

The door to 18D, Phillips’ suite, was slightly ajar. It had the air of a door that had never been anything else. I moved it a bit to see if the hinges were rusty. I edged through the door and stepped right out of the Mark Hopkins Hotel.

At first I didn’t know where I was. I was dazzled by the pure drabness of the decor. Someone had walled off a section of the suite, forming a shallow, dark antechamber. The walls were the color of stale, diluted tobacco. The only decoration on them was a faded, flyblown Goodyear Rubber Company calendar. Some wiseacre had made a clumsy attempt to turn the Goodyear blimp into a tit. The carpet underfoot was thin to the point of near translucence and ex
uded dust with every footstep. The furniture—a cruel-looking library table, four broken-spirited chairs, and an ashtray on a bayonet stand —said back-alley abortionist.

But a half-glass door across the anteroom dimly lit from within said “M. Phillips, Private Investigations” in peeling bronze letters. “Knock
First” warned a footnote on the door, so I did. I almost expected my knuckles to raise dust.

“Come in,” said a heavy voice. “The door’s not locked.” I tried the knob and found that it was. I tried the knob a little harder, and it came off in my hand.
“Come in, come in,” said the same voice with distracted impatience. It came from a throat that had been well-cured with cigarette smoke.

“I’d sure like to,” I said through the frosted glass, “but the door is locked, and I seem to have the knob in my hand.”

Silence. Then the springs of a swivel chair squeaked pitifully, and footsteps—slow but not too heavy—came toward me. The door swung inward, and Marley Phillips filled most of the doorway.

It had been nearly five years since I’d seen Phillips, and he’d aged. Not radically, but gently
, as if he were a shale boulder gradually being eroded by balmy winds and Pacific waves. He stood just under six-feet tall, not slumped or bent but slightly telescoped, as if he’d been pressed down for a long time by a steady but not unbearable load. Phillips must have been close to seventy, and his face had the lines to prove it. But the brown eyes were bright and unclouded. Above them, his still-thick hair had gone gray-white.

When he opened the door
, Phillips’ face wore an expression I can only describe as martyred—tough, rude, likely to tell you to go to hell, but a martyr all the same. He was all set to hear about my problem.

Instead, I said, “Hello, I’m Joe
Goodey.”

The crown of thorns slipped from Phillips’ brow, and the martyr was transformed into a professional. Old, tired, maybe past it, but a pro all the same. “Come in,
Goodey,” he said, turning back into the room. “Come in. Sorry I took so long to answer. I’m having a hell of a struggle with Steinitz. He’s a stubborn son of a bitch.”

As I followed him into the small, rectangular office, I swiveled my neck, trying to locate the son of a bitch. But all I could see was a room which equaled the antechamber in drabness. The only furni
ture in it was a blocky, heel-marked desk made of something which might have been wood once, a battered, slightly listing file cabinet with one drawer hanging open like a sleeping drunk’s mouth, and an elderly hat rack groaning under the weight of an antique fedora with a turned-down brim. Rolled-down shades the color of dust dully reflected the light from a naked bulb dangling from the ceiling like a hanged man. On the far wall was a door with a frosted window labeled ‘Gents.’ A gooseneck telephone stood on the very edge of the desk as if it were thinking of jumping.

Phillips pointed me toward a chair and retired behind his desk. He instinctively fell into the pose of a man who’d seen everything— twice. Then I noticed that set up in the middle of a pool-table-green desk blotter was a fine ivory chess set on a board which looked like ebony. I don’t know much about chess, but I could tell that some
body was getting the hell knocked out of him.

Phillips reached out and knocked over his sole bishop with a defeated hand. “If Steinitz hadn’t been dead for over sixty years,” he said, “I’d go step on his face.” Then he looked up at me with eyes that might have seen the Crucifixion.

“Now, what can I do for you?”

“I’m Joe
Goodey,” I reminded him gently. “You said you wanted to see me. George, the bartender at Hungry Joe’s, gave me the message.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “
Goodey. You’re the cop who quit the force last week to become a private detective. I heard about it and wanted to have a talk with you. But first let’s buy ourselves a drink. I think you’ll find a bottle in the bottom drawer of that file cabinet.” Yeah, he thought I’d find a bottle the way I think I’ll find hands at the end of my arms. I turned, pulled open the drawer, and reached into its depths. My hand encountered and gripped something round, smooth and cool. I pulled out a quart bottle and set it on the blotter next to his busted chess game. The label said “Fine Canadian Rye, 12 Years Old,” but the bottle was as empty as Miss America’s smile.

Phillips had ducked down to a desk drawer and came up with a couple murky glasses. He took in the empty bottle with the ex
pression of a condemned man whose reprieve from the governor turned out to be a singing telegram. He put the glasses down with a muted clunk. He raised his eyebrows wryly and said: “I forgot. They won’t let me drink.” A silence settled, and we sat there, me looking at nothing much and him fixing me with what was either a benevolent gaze or a disgusted stare.

Phillips pulled himself together manfully. “What I really want to know,
Goodey,” he said, “is are you going to turn out to be a shit-heel like most of the dicks in San Francisco, or are you trying to be a real private investigator?”

That must have been a rhetorical question, because I hadn’t even opened my mouth to answer him when he was off and running again.

“I expect you know something about me, Goodey,” he said, “but let me fill you in a bit. For nearly thirty years I was a private eye in Los Angeles. I never got rich, but I did all right. I never took a dirty dollar or chased too hard after a clean one. There are some old cops, retired now or maybe dead, who’d have told you I was a sneaky, crooked son of a bitch, but they’d have been wrong. I lied to a few cops in my day, held out on them. But I never sold a client out or betrayed a confidence. I’ve seen the inside of a cell on that account.” All this he said almost to himself, but then Phillips looked up and got my eye in a hammerlock. “You know what I’m talking about, Goodey?” he demanded.

“I’m pretty sure I do.”

“I’m not saying I haven’t done things I shouldn’t have,” he went on. “I’ve killed men I wouldn’t have had to if I’d been better at my job. I’ve slapped a few women around, but only when it was absolutely necessary. You ever hit a woman, Goodey?”

I riffled through my memory for a few moments and then said, “Not many, outside of my wife, that is.”

Phillips didn’t like that much, but he let it pass. “You married, then, Goodey?” he asked disapprovingly.

“I was,” I said, “but the thing seems to have died a natural death. She’s in New York.”

He liked that better. “It’s just as well,” he said, the way surgeons don’t mind talking about taking out your gall bladder. “I never met a married private detective who was worth a damn. Though there was one fellow once working out in the Valley who used to take his wife along on jobs. She’d sit in the car and knit while he worked. You have any idea what she was knitting?”

“You’ve got me.”

“It turned out to be his shroud,” said Phillips, not, I wouldn’t be surprised, for the first time.

We both chewed that one over silently for a while.

Then Phillips started patting the breast pocket of a rumpled but very expensive sharkskin suit as if he were trying to put out a brush fire somewhere in his underwear. He stopped and looked up at me balefully.

“I used to get through forty to fifty
Fatimas a day,” he said, “some years back. But the sawbones said it was either cut down or put a down payment on a coffin. But that’s my problem. What about you, Goodey? You pick up any jobs yet?”

“I’ve got a little something to keep me busy,” I said modestly. “Would it by any chance have anything to do with the murder of Tina
D’Oro?” he asked.

I put on my best poker face and looked back at him. “I’ve been wondering, Mr. Phillips,” I said, “just what is behind that door with the ‘Gents’ sign.”