The Cutie (16 page)

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Nothing to do with Mavis,” I said. “It was something else, I almost forgot all about it.”

“Listen, I’ll cooperate—”

“I was just wondering if you had a gun,” I said.

“Well, of course I do. I keep large amounts of money in the safe here—”

“You don’t have to justify it,” I told him. “I was just wondering if you had one. Where is it, in your desk?”

“Yes. But I don’t—”

“Could I see it for a second?”

“Listen,” he said, and now he wasn’t gray any more, he was pure white. “Listen, what is this? I haven’t done anything to Ed Ganolese—”

“Stop being so worried,” I said. “I don’t want to use it on you. If I did, I’d pick a more private place than your club to do it. I just want to look at it for a second.”

“Why?”

“I’m interested in guns.”

I held my hand out, and he tried to stare me down, but I had Ed Ganolese and the whole organization staring on my side, and he finally looked away from me, shrugged his shoulders, and opened a desk drawer.

The gun he handed me was a monster, a Colt .45 automatic, the kind of gun that spreads people all over the landscape. “You expect to be robbed by elephants?” I asked him.

“A gun’s a gun,” he said, which wasn’t exactly true, but I didn’t argue with him. I sniffed at the barrel and didn’t smell anything but cold metal. I took the clip out, and it was full. I broke it open, and it was clean and well greased. It hadn’t been fired for some time.

“This the only gun you have?” I asked him.

“Yes,” he said.

“Well, thanks again.”

I gave him back his blockbuster, and he said, “Mavis is dead, isn’t she? Was she shot, is that it? Who was she playing around with lately, Ed Ganolese?”

“You ought to read the papers more often,” I told him.

Cy Grildquist was next, I decided, so I walked down the block from Johnny’s Pub and stopped off at the drugstore on the corner to make a phone call. I wasn’t sure whether a producer would normally be found at the theater during his show or at home. I tried the theater first, and they told me he wouldn’t be in his office until the next afternoon. So I tried him at home.

He answered himself, a heavy-voiced individual, sounding as though he’d been smoking too many cigars too long. “This is Grildquist,” he said, and waited for me to tell him who I was.

I didn’t want to warn him in advance that somebody was coming over to talk to him about Mavis St. Paul, so I said, “I’m a playwright, Mr. Grildquist. I haven’t had anything accepted yet, but—”

As I’d expected, he went immediately into the brush-off routine. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m tied up with
A Sound of Distant Drums
right now, and I’m afraid I only look at plays submitted by agents. I’d suggest you go talk to an agent.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, thanks a lot.”

“Any time,” he said.

I left the drugstore, hailed a cab, and went up to Grildquist’s address, in the East 60’s. Only four blocks from Mavis St. Paul’s apartment, but in New York that doesn’t mean a thing. A New York City apartment is like a home on the moon. For all intents and purposes there isn’t anybody else around for a million miles.

Grildquist’s building was just off Fifth Avenue and the park, and I could see right away it wasn’t going to be an easy place to get into. There was a doorman and, behind him, a small telephone switchboard setup attached to the wall. Before I could get by the doorman, somebody in that building was going to have go give the okay.

Well, I was going to have to give Cy Grildquist advance warning, after all. I walked up to the entrance, the doorman held the door open for me, and I went on in.

The doorman said, “Who did you wish to see, please?”

“Mr. Grildquist,” I said.

“Your name?”

“Tell him I’m from Ernest Tesselman,” I said, hoping Grildquist knew who Ernest Tesselman was. “It’s about Mavis.”

“Mavis?”

“That’s right.”

“And your own name, sir?”

“Just say I’m from Ernest Tesselman,” I repeated.

He thought it over for a few seconds, then shrugged and went away to his switchboard. I waited, looking around at the shining tile and marble of the lobby, and then the doorman came back to me and said, “Eleven C, sir. Take the first elevator.”

I thanked him, and took the first elevator. Eleven C was just across the hall from the elevator, and Grild-quist opened the door the minute I pressed the bell button.

He had to be Grildquist. He went with that cigar-smoker’s voice. Heavy, florid, well jowled, prosperous and paunchy, dressed in a slightly old-fashioned brown suit, complete with vest and ultraconservative tie.

He told me to come in and led the way to the living room, where he told me to sit down. He then asked me if I wanted something to drink. I mentioned Scotch and water, and he went away to mix it while I looked at the room.

Broadway producing apparently pays off. The living room was huge, and on two levels. Midway across, two steps led down to a sunken area in the room, where a white sofa, white rug and white tables blended rather nicely with pale-green walls, dark-wood bar and console, and rough-tile fireplace. The fireplace looked real, though there was no fire going in it at the moment. French doors led out from this part of the living room to a terrace and the lights of the city.

The upper part of the living room, where I was sitting, was dominated by an overgrown color television set. Armchairs and sofas were placed here and there, their position determined entirely by the position of the television set. It was impossible to sit down anywhere in the room without having that huge blank screen staring you in the face. I wished I could move down to the non-electronic half of the room.

Grildquist came back with drinks, handed me mine, and sat down off to my left. We drank a bit and looked at the blank television screen. Then Grildquist said, in a casual tone of voice, as though it wasn’t very important, “Who is Ernest Tesselman?”

“Mavis’s last boyfriend,” I said. I looked over at him. “You let me up here without knowing who Tesselman was?”

He smiled at the television set. “You thought that was the magic name? No, I’m sorry. The name Mavis was what opened the door for you.”

“Oh,” I said. “I see.”

He was still looking at the television set, so I did, too. But it was still off. For some reason, that set slowed the conversation down to a crawl. Grildquist and I weren’t looking at each other, we were looking at the TV. We weren’t talking to each other, we were talking to that big square idiot-face, and the set was translating or something.

“Thing broke down a couple of weeks ago,” Grild-quist said suddenly. “The hell with it. I never watch it anyway. My wife was the television fan.”

“That’s your competition, isn’t it?” I asked him.

“No,” he said. “People watch television when they don’t feel like exerting themselves to find something good. When they want something good, they go to the theater. Television and theater are competitors the same way flat beer and good Scotch are competitors.”

“This is fine Scotch,” I said, tinkling the ice cubes against the glass.

“Thank you,” he said. “You were the playwright who called a while back, weren’t you?”

“I wanted to know if you were home.”

“I take it you’re a private detective,” he said.

“Like on television? No, I’m afraid not. Just a friend of Ernest Tesselman’s.”

“Mavis’s last boyfriend.”

“That’s right.”

“Don’t say anything for a minute,” he said. “Let me make a few guesses.” He adjusted himself in his chair, frowned gloomily at the television set, and said, “Your Mr. Tesselman doesn’t think the man the police are after is really the one who killed Mavis. So he hired you, or asked you, or told you, depending on your relationship with him, to nose around and find out who the killer really is. You nosed around, as per instructions, and somebody or other told you I used to know Mavis. That made me a suspect. So you’ve come up here to find out whether or not I murdered her.”

“And you were expecting me,” I told the TV. “Why?”

“As a matter of fact, I wasn’t. But a theatrical producer spends a large portion of his life reading plays. A great many of them are mysteries. In addition, there’s—” He gestured at the television. “When the doorman told me someone wanted to talk to me about Mavis, it was easy to see I was cast as a character in Act Two, Scene One.”

“Why did you let me come on up?”

“If I turned you away, you’d be convinced I was the man you were after. I’m not particularly busy this evening, and a short conversation with you can’t do any harm. Besides, it might help you, though I admit I can’t see how. But I’d like the killer found. Mavis was a good girl.”

“I’ve been told she was mercenary,” I said, remembering Betty Benson’s description.

He laughed. “Not completely,” he said. “That’s a fairly accurate description of Mavis’s personality, but I’m afraid it’s misleading. Mavis wasn’t a whore, she wouldn’t go to bed with just any man who had the money. She had to like a man before she’d pay any attention to him.”

“And she only liked rich men,” I said.

“That was a phase, I think. I think she would have matured out of it. It was just a reaction to that marriage of hers.”

“Marriage?”

“You must have heard she was married once.”

“Back in her home town.”

“Yes. A professional man of some kind. A bright, steady future of the suburban ranch-style variety. He offered her security and love, rather than wealth, and then he deserted her. So she didn’t want security and love any more. She wanted wealth. It was understandable.”

“What was her married name, do you know?”

“Wasn’t it St. Paul? No, I suppose that was a stage name, come to think of it. I’m sorry, I don’t think she ever mentioned the man’s name. She didn’t like to talk about him.”

“How did you happen to meet her in the first place?”

“Paul Devon brought her to a party. He’s an acting teacher, also done some directing, off-Broadway. They’d been going together for a while.”

“And you were richer,” I said.

He smiled at the television set. “That takes care of my manly charm, doesn’t it? I suppose you’re right. I was richer. I was also a Broadway producer, and Mavis wanted desperately to be a star.”

“Did she have any talent?”

“Some. Not enough, really. She was too sporadic, her interpretations were always too shallow.”

“Why did you split up?”

“My wife was planning on divorcing me. I thought it would be better if I trod the straight and narrow for a while, rather than give my wife ammunition. By the time that was all over with, Mavis was off with somebody else. A nightclub man, I think.”

“What was your attitude about that?”

“I got another girl.” He looked away from the television set long enough to grin at me. “I bore Mavis no ill will,” he said. “Besides, that was more than three years ago.”

“Have you seen her since then?”

“Once or twice, at parties. We were still friends, but we didn’t see much of one another.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“Well over a year ago. She was with Charlie Morgan, a television producer. He died shortly after that.”

“Have you seen Betty Benson lately?”

“Benson?” He frowned, studying the TV. “Benson,” he said again. “Oh, you mean Mavis’s friend. The home-towny little girl.” He looked over at me suddenly. “Is that the girl who was just killed?”

“That’s right.”

“You think it’s the same man, of course.”

“Of course.”

“I only met the girl once. Before Mavis moved into the apartment I rented for her. I barely remember what she looked like.”

“And you’ve never seen her since.”

“No, I’ve had no need to.”

“Do you own a gun?”

He looked at me again, puzzled. “Mavis was stabbed, wasn’t she?”

“So was Betty Benson,” I said. “I was just wondering if you owned a gun.”

“As a matter of fact, I do. It isn’t really mine, it belonged to my second wife.”

“The one you were married to while you were going with Mavis?”

“Yes. She left it here, and I never got around to giving it back to her. She’s out in California now, and I believe there are some laws about shipping guns in the mail.”

“Could I see it?”

“Could I ask why?”

“Somebody took a shot at me tonight.”

“Oh.” He got to his feet. “I’m not sure I can find it,” he said.

“I would like to look at it.”

“How strong a suspect am I?” he asked suddenly.

“I don’t have any rating system set up,” I told him.

“If I don’t find the gun, I imagine I’ll become more of a favorite,” he said.

“That depends,” I said.

“I’ll take a look for it. Mix yourself another drink while I’m gone.”

“Thanks.”

He went away, and I got to my feet, refusing to look at the television set. Grildquist’s glass was empty, too, so I carried them both down to the lower part of the living room and made new drinks. Then I went back and sat down again, but the television set was growing increasingly annoying, so I got up and shifted my chair so it faced the one Grildquist was sitting in. I shifted his chair, too, sat back down again, and Grildquist came back.

He had the gun in his hand, a little .25, shiny-barreled, ivory-handled, a ladies’ gun, the kind advertised as being “handy for pocket or purse.” He was holding it loosely, but his finger was touching the trigger. The barrel was aimed at a point on the floor midway between us.

He stood in the doorway for a second, half-smiling at me. Then he said, “You know, if I were the man who’d killed Mavis and who’d tried to kill you, you’d be in an awkward position right now. I could shoot you, chop your body up in the bathtub, and drop the pieces down the incinerator.”

“Did that come out of one of the plays you read?” I asked him.

“Yes,” he said. His smile broadened. “I rejected it. Unrealistic. The private detective wouldn’t get himself into a position like this.”

“The doorman knows I came up,” I said.

“Why should he remember you? Why should he ever wonder where you went?”