Hard Case Crime: Blackmailer (3 page)

When I woke up again it was dark.

I felt terrible.

I tried to move but it didn’t seem possible.

Six martinis and no lunch. I got up and went into the bathroom.

When I came back out again I was weaker but feeling better.

In a little while I had a glass of milk. It stayed down and I decided I might possibly live.

I looked at my watch. It was after nine. It seemed a little late to call the office and tell them I wouldn’t be in. But Pat knew I had been lunching with Lorraine. So that was all right.

I washed my face, combed my hair, made some coffee and sat in a comfortable chair sipping it slowly.

I had been too sick to think about Janis Whitney before. But now I was beginning to feel better.

I had been the first man Janis knew when she came to New York. This is a delicate way of saying that I was the first man in Janis’ life.

That was in 1940 and Janis was twenty-one. She’d had a season of summer stock at Provincetown and had come to New York that fall. She was living at one of those clubs for stagestruck girls on the upper west side.

The thing we had in common was the theatre. The only difference was that Janis had talent. I had absolutely none. I had held two jobs, assistant stage manager for a successful Wiman show, and stage
manager for a straight play that ran three nights.

At the time I was laboring under the misapprehension that I was a writer. I had written a play.

Janis and I were convinced that it would be produced and that she would play the female lead. After I met Janis I rewrote it to make the heroine twenty-one instead of thirty. And I made her a brunette instead of a blonde.

Unfortunately it was not a very good play. I was suffering from a severe case of Philip Barry and the leading characters, Duncan and Phyllis (I think that’s what they were called—I had the good judgment to burn the only existing copy a few years ago) said things to each other like: “...fun, Dunc?” “Oh, very fun!”

However, the play did have a number of very tender love scenes and we rehearsed these almost nightly in my apartment on Tenth Street.

You did not have to be particularly astute to know that Janis Whitney was going to be a big star. She was a beautiful girl with soft, dark hair, greenish eyes and a wide exciting mouth. Her face was animated and she smiled easily. She knew instinctively how to dress and, most important of all, you could feel the impact of her personality when she entered a room.

And of course she had the one other thing.

The ambition.

The driving, compelling ambition. I do not pretend to have psychiatric training. I have only a superficial knowledge of the inner drives and conflicts that shape
peoples’ lives. But in Janis the need for success was stronger than in anyone I had ever met.

And I know this: I was desperately in love with her. But at no time did it ever occur to me that we might possibly get married. We both accepted, without ever actually discussing it, that there was no place for marriage in Janis’ life.

Janis was going to be a star.

We both knew this. It was an accepted fact.

After Janis left for California I lost interest in the theatre.

I was twenty-five years old and had worked exactly six months during the three and a half years I’d been out of college.

That was when a friend of my family got me a job in one of the larger publishing houses.

I was surprisingly good at my work, and when I got out of the army I stepped into a fairly responsible editorial position. In 1950 I left to join Pat Conrad in establishing our own company.

I really thought that I had forgotten Janis. But I hadn’t.

I was sitting in the chair smoking a cigarette when the truth suddenly dawned on me. I was still in love with Janis Whitney and always had been.

I got out the phone book and looked up the number of the Carlyle Hotel. I called Max Shriber’s office. Mr. Shriber was not in. The operator did not know where he could be reached.

“Do you happen to know where I could reach a client of Mr. Shriber’s—Janis Whitney? She’s in from Hollywood.”

The girl was sorry but she did not have that information.

I hung up.

I went into the kitchen and made myself a sandwich. I had some more coffee and another cigarette.

I remembered once, when we were walking through the park, Janis had said,
“When I’m a big star and I come to New York on a personal appearance tour, I’m going to stay at the Plaza.”

We used to talk quite a lot about what we would do when she was a big star and I was a successful playwright.

Just on a hunch I dialed the Plaza.

“Is Miss Janis Whitney staying there?”

It was a lousy hunch. Miss Whitney was not registered there.

I was restless. I had nothing better to do. I called the Savoy Plaza. And the Sherry Netherland. And the St. Regis. And the Hampshire House.

Then I began to feel a little ridiculous.

But I was still restless.

I was putting on a clean shirt to go out when the door buzzer sounded. Idiotically, I felt a shock of excitement.

I pressed the buzzer and called, “Who is it?”

A girl’s voice said, “Me.”

I knew it couldn’t possibly be Janis. Still, I was listed in the phone book. If she’d wanted to find me it would have been easy enough.

“Who is it?” I said again.

Then I opened the door and saw Jean Dahl running up the flight of stairs from the ground floor.

She was still wearing the same black dress and the beaver coat.

She smiled a little. “Hello, baby,” she said. “I told you I’d get in touch with you.”

“Come on in,” I said.

She came into the living room, dropped her coat onto a chair, and walked straight to the couch. She sat down and took a cigarette out of her purse. I closed the door very gently behind me.

“Do you have a match?”

I lit her cigarette.

“Well,” she said, “have you thought it over?” I hadn’t really thought about it at all. Janis Whitney had put everything else out of my mind.

“I’m glad you came up,” I said. “I want to know more about this.”

I was stalling, trying to get my mind back on the track again.

She smiled. It was just a smile. It didn’t tell me anything.

“What’s there to know? I have the only copy of a book Charles Anstruther wrote before he died. You publish books. I want to sell it. Now, are you going to offer me a drink?”

I looked at her.

She was very cool and very attractive. Suddenly I began to feel angry. “No,” I said, “I don’t think I am.”

She raised her eyebrows inquiringly.

“Not right this minute, I’m not.” I walked over to where she was sitting. “Not till I find out what this is all about. Fifteen minutes after you walked out of the office this morning, I had a note from a man named Max Shriber offering me a book he said Charles Anstruther wrote before he died. As far as anyone knows, Anstruther didn’t leave an unpublished book. What’s going on here? What kind of racket is this?”

“Take it easy, baby,” Jean Dahl said.

She stood up and very casually walked over to the bar. Very deliberately she poured about two inches of whisky into a glass. She reached into the ice bucket and filled the glass with ice. She stood by the bar for a moment casually swirling the ice and whisky around in her glass.

“You’re a lousy host, baby,” she said. “I don’t think I like you.”

She raised the glass. “Cheers,” she said and took a long sip.

I walked over and stood very close to her.

“I don’t think I like you either,” I said. “But I’m going to find out.”

I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do. But I was going to do something.

I slapped the glass out of her hand. It broke against the bar and shards scattered over the floor.

Then I took her by the shoulders and pulled her to me. She slid unresistingly into my arms. She lifted her head with her lips slightly parted. Her eyes were closed.

I couldn’t decide whether to slap her or kiss her. I kissed her.

The kiss must have lasted thirty seconds, and when we separated we were both breathing hard.

She reached into my breast pocket and took out a handkerchief. She wiped my lips with it.

“That’s better,” she said.

“O.K.,” I said. “Now I’ll fix us both a drink.”

I had my hand in the ice bucket when we heard the knock at the door.

“What the hell?” I said.

There had been no buzzer from downstairs. Just a knock at my apartment door.

I looked at Jean Dahl.

She was standing very tensely, listening. The color had drained out of her face.

“I’ll see who it is,” I said.

“Don’t,” she said. “Please don’t open it.”

“What are you talking about?” I said. I started for the door. “It’s probably the janitor or somebody...”

I unlatched the door.

There were two men standing there, blocking the door.

A short one and a tall one. They were both heavyset, dark, nondescript-looking men. They both wore dark suits. And terrible neckties. Their faces were completely expressionless.

“Yes?” I said. “What is it?”

Neither of them spoke.

The tall one put his hand on my chest and pushed very hard. I was off balance and fell backward.

The two men came into the apartment and closed the door behind them.

“What the hell is this?” I said.

Jean Dahl had control of herself again. You would not have known that a moment before her eyes had been wide with panic.

“So there’s going to be rough stuff,” she said. Her voice was very cool.

“Where is it?” the short one said. “There doesn’t have to be any rough stuff, you know.”

I picked up a whisky bottle from the bar and threw it at the tall one as hard as I could. It hit him on the shoulder, and bounced off onto the carpet. Oddly enough it did not break. He ignored it completely. I didn’t see the short one swing at me. All I knew was that I was on the floor and my mouth felt crushed.

I picked myself up.

The tall one was very casually putting the bottle back on the bar.

“Sit quietly on the couch,” Shorty said.

Jean Dahl and I sat quietly on the couch.

The big one picked up her purse and dumped the contents on the coffee table.

There was the usual junk. Lipstick, compact, cigarettes, keys, letters, Kleenex. There was one unusual item. A small automatic pistol.

Very casually the little one poked around in the pile of junk. Without comment he put the gun in his pocket. He didn’t find anything that interested him in the pile. He nodded toward the tall one.

The tall one went into the bathroom. I could hear him opening the medicine chest and dumping things out.

“What’s going on here?” I said. “What do you think you’re doing?”

The little one ignored my question and kept watching us.

“These friends of yours?” I said to Jean.

She didn’t answer.

After a while, the tall one came out of the bathroom. He had taken off his coat and had rolled up his shirt sleeves. His arm was wet. He shook his head.

“Nothing doing,” he said. “I even checked inside the can.”

Then he went into the kitchenette. All three of us—Jean Dahl, the short man and I—watched him. He dumped out cans, ripped up the oilcloth from shelves, emptied the cabinets. He opened the refrigerator and emptied every container and jar. He took his time. He did a very thorough job.

“What are you looking for?” I said.

Neither of them paid the slightest attention to me.

I jumped up and dove for the telephone. The short one knocked the phone out of my hand and hit me again. And, very casually, he picked up the phone and replaced it on the table.

When the big one had finished in the kitchen he went into the bedroom. He dumped out all the bureau drawers. Went through all my clothes. He ripped up the mattress with a long, ugly razor blade in a holder. He rolled back the rug and searched under it.

He shredded the curtains, and took down the pictures. He broke open the picture frames and examined the backs. He cut up my three suitcases into ribbons.

He was in no hurry at all.

I could feel the pulse pounding in my head. I watched the whole thing as if it were a dream or a movie or something that I was in no way involved in. I felt like a spectator. And my mouth hurt.

At one point the telephone rang. Nobody said anything. The tall one did not even stop his methodical searching. I made no move to answer it. It rang seven times. Finally it stopped.

When the tall one had finished with the bedroom, they both went to work on the living room. They took down every book on the shelves, dumping each one on the floor when they had finished with it. They went through every cupboard. They tore up the upholstery, and ripped the back off the TV set, and tore the radio
phonograph apart. They held the whisky bottles up to the light but they didn’t break them.

They were suspicious of one table. They broke the legs off it and examined them for secret hiding places.

The blinds were drawn, but they examined them without actually opening them or tearing them down. They broke the big mirror that had hung above the fireplace and examined the wall behind it. They smashed three pottery lamps.

They did it all with no unnecessary noise.

Very methodically.

Completely impersonally and without emotion.

They went through all the papers on my desk. They examined every paper in my file. They went back to the kitchenette and ripped the electric clock off the wall.

When they had finished, everything breakable in the apartment was broken, every movable object was piled on the floor, and every piece of fabric had been ripped open. Cushions on the couch and the two easy chairs were foam rubber, so they did not pull them apart.

The search took them over two hours.

And they still had not found what they wanted.

There was no conversation between the two men. They seemed to know exactly what they were doing. The tall one picked Jean Dahl’s beaver coat up from the chair, went through the two pockets and then, very
carefully, starting with the lining, cut it to shreds with his razor. Then the short one sighed and motioned to Jean Dahl.