1945 - Blonde's Requiem

  chapter one

  One look at Cranville was enough.

  As I drove down Main Street a smell of dirt and decay drifted in through the open windows of the Packard. In the far distance I could see the high brick stacks of the smelters stuck up against the skyline. They belched black smoke that had, in the course of time, yellow-smoked everything into uniform dinginess.

  There was a sordid, undisciplined feeling about the town I didn’t like. The first policeman I saw needed a shave, and two buttons from his uniform were missing. The second, directing traffic, had a cigar in his mouth.

  The sidewalk, littered with papers and trash, was crowded. Groups of men stood around at street corners. Some of them read newspapers, while others tried to read over their shoulders. Women slouched past like they had something on their minds. Shops seemed empty; even the bartenders were standing outside in the sunshine. I didn’t have to be told that Cranville was coiled up like a spring with suppressed anger and excitement. I could see it just by looking at the people.

  I stopped at a drugstore and, using one of the phones, called Lewes Wolf. I told him I had arrived.

  ‘Well, come on out.” He sounded like a man used to getting his own way.

  His voice was harsh and impatient. “You go through the town and turn right at the traffic lights. It’s a mile or so further on.”

  I said I’d be right over and left the drugstore.

  There was a small crowd of loafers around my car. I didn’t cotton on at first.

  As I started to ease my way through the crowd, I heard someone say: “That’s the dick from New York.”

  I looked quickly over my shoulder, but I didn’t stop. They were a sick, seedy-looking bunch, dirty, tired and angry. A guy with a big Adam’s apple said: “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get the hell outa here.” I was startled to see he was talking to me.

  There was a murmur from the other guys. They edged closer and they looked like they wanted to take a poke at me.

  I got the car door open quickly and slid under the steering wheel.

  The guy with the Adam’s apple shoved his lean unshaven face through the window. “Beat it, Gum-shoe,” he said in a gritty voice. ‘We don’t like your kind around here.”

  I had the engine running. “Take it easy,” I said, wanting to hang one on his jaw, and I drove off. In the driving mirror I could see them staring after me.

  I felt damp under my arms, but I wasn’t here to fight bums. I had other things to do.

  I found Wolf’s house without difficulty. It was so big I couldn’t miss it.

  From the front wall a half-acre or so of fine green lawn spread in a gentle slope down to the street. The sidewalk and the parkway were both very wide and in the parkway the flowering bushes were worth seeing.

  I left my car on the street, walked across the lawn and rang the bell in the brick portico under a peaked roof.

  The manservant—a noiseless, sharp-eyed man of fifty—took me into Wolf’s study. It was some place. There was tapestry on the blank roughened stucco walls, iron grilles imitating balconies outside high windows, heavy carved chairs and a marble-topped table with carved legs. Thirty years ago it could have been quite a room.

  Wolf was sitting by the window waiting for me. He was big and fat. His head was almost perfectly round under the close-cropped white hair. He reminded me of an octopus with his beaky little nose and thin, cruel mouth.

  His small, watery eyes crawled over me, but he didn’t say anything.

  “I called you five minutes ago,” I said. “I’m an International Investigations operative, New York branch. You asked for a man to do some work.”

  “That’s what you say,” Wolf growled, peering at me suspiciously. “But how do I know who you’re from?”

  I gave him my identity card. It had been designed by Colonel Forsberg, my chief, especially for suspicious, irritable clients like Wolf. It was a neat job. On the outside it had the silver shield of the International Investigations and inside it had my photograph and everything about me, including my thumbprint. It was countersigned by the New York District Attorney.

  Wolf stared at the card longer than necessary. Maybe he enjoyed keeping me standing there. “I suppose it’s all right,” he grunted at last and tossed the card back to me. “Know why you’re here?”

  I said I didn’t.

  He fidgeted with his gold watch-chain, then he waved to a chair. “Sit down.”

  I picked the most comfortable chair in the room, pulled it close to him and took the weight off my feet.

  He stared out of the window for some minutes without saying anything. I don’t know whether he was trying to get my goat, but if he was, he didn’t succeed. I watched him, knowing that time was on my side.

  “See that?” he suddenly barked, pointing out of the window.

  I followed his finger. I had to lean forward before I caught a glimpse of the distant smokestacks.

  “They were mine.”

  I didn’t know whether to console him or congratulate him, so I didn’t say anything.

  “I ran that mine for twenty years. I owned it, heart, stun and guts. I quit last month.” His fat face sagged as he said it, I grunted.

  That seemed to annoy him. “A pup like you wouldn’t understand,” he snapped, his watery eyes gleaming. “I worked there twelve hours a day for twenty years and I miss it.”

  I said I guessed he did.

  Ile thumped on the arm of the chair. ‘Three days away from that mine and I was crazy with boredom. Do you know what I’m going to do now?” He leaned forward, his face congested with excitement. “I’m going to be mayor of this damn town and I’m going to put it on its feet.”

  It wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d gone for the White House.

  “There are two other candidates,” he went on, a grim note in his voice. “The election’s in a month’s time. That gives you three weeks to find the missing girls.”

  I didn’t know what he was talking about. “What missing girls?”

  He waved his hands impatiently. “I forget their names. My secretary will give you details. Three girls are missing. Esslinger and Macey are using the disappearances to get votes. That’ll show you the kind of heels they are, but three can play at that game. Your job’s to find the girls before either Esslinger or Macey fund ‘em. I’ve paid Forsberg plenty, and God help you if you don’t get results.”

  This was all Chinese to me. I saw he wasn’t the kind of guy to bother with details. It was a waste of time to sit and listen to him.

  “Maybe I’d better talk to your secretary,” I said, getting up.

  “She’ll tell you.” He nodded his round head vigorously. “Only remember, I’m going to be mayor of this town. When I want something, I get it. Understand?”

  I said I did.

  He rang a bell. A girl of nineteen or twenty, small, pale and scared, came in.

  She wore glasses and she looked as if she could have used a meal.

  “This is a detective,” Wolf harked at her. “Take him away and tell him what he wants to know.”

  She looked at me curiously and moved to the door.

  I stood up.

  Wolf said: “Remember what I said . . . results. Don’t come here until you’ve something to tell me.”

  I said I’d have something for him before long and followed the girl out of the room. She took me across the lobby into a smaller room, equipped as an office.

  “I’m Marc Spewack,” I said, as she closed the door. “I hope I’m not fording up your work.”

  She again looked at me curiously. Maybe she had never seen a detective before. “What did you want to know?” she asked
, moving round behind her desk.

  I sat down on a hard chair. There was no comfort in this little room.

  “Mr. Wolf wrote my chief, Colonel Forsberg, sent him a cheque and asked him to handle a case for him. He didn’t say what the case was. I’m doing the work, so I want to know what it’s all about.”

  She sat down. “Then I’d best give you a brief account of what’s been happening,” she said.

  I said that’d be fine.

  “About a month ago,” she began, in a low, monotonous voice, “a girl named Luce McArthur disappeared. Her father works in a drugstore on the corner of Sydney and Murray. A couple of days later another girl disappeared. She was the daughter of a janitor named Dengate. A week after that a third girl, named Joy Kunz, disappeared. Mr. Wolf went to Chief of Police Macey to find out what was being’ done about the missing girls. You see, there was a great deal of unrest in town. Parents were naturally anxious and the local press were hinting that there was a mass killer at large.

  “As a result of Mr. Wolf’s visit, the police started a search. They went to all the empty houses in Cranville and in one of them they found a shoe that belonged to Joy Kunz. They didn’t find anything else, nor have they any clues even now. The finding of the shoe started a panic in Cranville. Mr. Wolf thought he’d get experts in and that’s why he’s sent for you.” She stopped talking and made a row of fingerprints along the polished edge of her desk.

  “That clears the air,” I said, admiring the way she had given me the story.

  “Who’s Esslinger?”

  “He’s the local mortician.” She didn’t look at me while she talked. “He’s running for the election too.”

  “A mortician?” I was startled.

  When she didn’t elaborate, I said, “What are his chances of becoming mayor?”

  She made more fingerprints before saying: “Very good, I believe. The workers like him.” I thought there was a hint in her voice that she liked him too. But I couldn’t swear to that.

  Anyway, I couldn’t imagine the workers liking Wolf, but I didn’t say so. “Mr. Wolf thinks that if he finds the girls he’ll win popularity and get elected mayor, is that it?”

  She nodded. “Something like that.”

  “What does Esslinger say?”

  “He’s started an investigation too.”

  I was vaguely surprised. “Who’s working for him?”

  “Cranville has its own local agent,” she said. “Mr. Esslinger didn’t want strangers meddling with Cranville’s private affairs.”

  I looked at her sharply. “That sounds as if you agree with him.”

  She flushed and said: “My opinions don’t matter.”

  There was a pause while I stared at her, then I said: “Why didn’t Mr. Wolf employ your local agent?”

  Her mouth tightened. “He hasn’t any confidence in women,” she told me.

  “You see, the agency’s run by a woman.”

  That was comforting news to me, I didn’t have much confidence in women myself. I thought for a moment and then asked: “What do the police think?”

  “They won’t help either Mr. Wolf or Mr. Esslinger. Chief of Police Macey has his own candidate.”

  I laughed.

  Her mouth looked less prim, but she didn’t look up. “It’s a little complicated,” she admitted. “Chief of Police Macey wants Rube Starkey to be mayor, so he is carrying out his own investigation.”

  “Who’s Starkey?”

  She shook her head. “I’m afraid I don’t know anything about him except he’s a gambler and I don’t think he’s a very desirable person to be mayor.”

  “Well, that’s not bad considering you don’t know anything about him,” I said, with a smile. “What about these girls? Any angles?”

  “They’ve just disappeared. Nothing has been found so far.”

  “I see.” I selected a cigarette from my ease and lit it. This looked a hell of a case. “Let me get all this right. There are three separate investigations going on to find these girls. Wolf, Esslinger and Macey know that whoever finds them has the best chance of becoming mayor. I’m not likely to get any help from the police and I won’t be popular in Cranville because I’m an outsider. Esslinger’s investigator is likely to get support from Cranville, but not from the, police. Thu about it, isn’t it?”

  She said it was.

  I remembered the bunch of men who had surrounded my car. If that was going to happen to me every five minutes, I was going to have a swell time.

  “Excitement is pretty high, isn’t it?”

  “People are worried because nothing’s been done,” she said. “Some of them went down to police headquarters and broke some windows last night.” She sounded very calm about it all.

  I thought they’d be breaking my neck if I didn’t watch out.

  “Can you give me the names and addresses of all the people you’ve mentioned?”

  She opened a drawer and took out a sheet of paper. “I thought you’d want that,” she said.

  I thanked her and put the paper in my pocket.

  “I’ll poke around,” I said, getting up. “Maybe I’ll have something for Mr. Wolf in a day or so.”

  She suddenly looked straight at me. It was a shock to see she was hating me. Being a worker, I guessed she was on Esslinger’s side. With Wolf for a boss, I didn’t blame her, but it was a shock all the same. I could see how complicated it was all going to be.

  “Is there somewhere where I can leave my car?” I asked.

  She looked puzzled. “Leave your car?” she repeated.

  “It carries New York licence plates. They don’t seem popular around here. Some guys have already told me so.”

  For a split second she looked pleased, then she got her expression under control. “You can leave it in the garage around toe back. There’s plenty of room.”

  I thanked her. “I didn’t get your name,” I said at the door.

  “Wilson.” She flushed and looked embarrassed.

  “You’ve been a big help, Miss Wilson,” I said. “I hope I haven’t taken up too much of your time.”

  She said it was all right and pulled the typewriter towards her.

  * * *

  I booked a room at the Eastern Hotel on Main Street, dumped my bags and went out into the heat again. I took a cab out to McArthur’s place.

  The cab driver seemed to be in a hurry to get rid of me. He went through a red light with a policeman standing a yard away. The policeman didn’t even bother to look up. I thought Chief of Police Macey must be a pretty dumb cop.

  Four minutes’ furious driving brought us to a grim, sordid street, flanked either side by dirty tenements. Metal fire escapes crawled up the front of the buildings and men and women stood or sat on the iron steps in isolated groups.

  Faces looked into the street at the sound of the cab. Some of the women shouted in through the open windows, not wanting their husbands to miss anything.

  I knew I had made a mistake coming in a cab. I told the driver to keep on.

  “The address you want is right here,” he said, slowing down.

  I told him to keep going, and with a quick scowl over his shoulder he drove on. At the end of the street he turned left and I told him to stop. I gave him fifty cents and walked away before he could say anything.

  I walked round the block, giving the rubbernecks time to calm down. Then I sauntered down the street towards McArthur’s place.

  All the way I felt eyes watching me. I didn’t look up, but I knew the rubbernecks were wondering who I was and who I was going to see. That’s the worst of working a small town like Cranville. Everyone knows everyone else and a stranger sticks out like a boil.

  McArthur’s place was a five-storey brick building, halfway down the street. I was glad to get into the lobby, out of the sight of prying eyes. There were six mailboxes; McArthur was on the third floor.

  I went up. The stairs were uncarpeted, but clean
. There was a stale smell of cooking, but otherwise the house wasn’t so bad.

  I rapped on a door on the third floor and waited.

  The door was opened by a little man in shirt, trousers and slippers. He wore no collar and he hadn’t shaved. His thin, yellow face looked sad. “Yes, please?” he asked, peering at me through thick glasses.

  “Mr. McArthur?”

  He nodded. I could see he was surprised to be called mister. He looked like a guy who had been kicked around plenty in his day.

  “It’s about your daughter,” I said, watching him carefully.

  Fear and hope crowded into his eyes and he had to steady himself against the door. “Have—have they found her?” he said with pathetic, crushed eagerness.

  “Not yet.” I moved a step forward. “I’d like to come in a moment.”

  His face sagged with disappointment, but he stood aside. “We’re in a bit of a mess,” he muttered apologetically. “It ain’t easy to keep things going with this hanging over us.”

  I made sympathetic noises and closed the door. The room was clean, small and poorly furnished. Some stockings and women’s underclothes hung on a string across one side of the room.

  McArthur stood by the table and looked at me questioningly. “Who did you say you were from?”

  I took out my identity card and waved the shield at him. Before he could take a good look, it was back in my pocket. “I’m checking on your daughter’s disappearance,” I said. “Give me the help I want and I’ll get her back.”

  “Of course,” he said eagerly. “What did you want to know? So many people have been around asking questions.” He twisted his fingers. “But nothing’s been done.”

  I sat on the corner of the table. “What do you think’s happened to her?”

  “I don’t know.” He tried to control, his hands, but he wasn’t successful. They reminded me of two white fluttering moths. “I don’t seem able to think properly since it happened.”

  “Was she unhappy at home? I mean do you think she’s run away or something like that?”

  He shook his head helplessly. “She was a good girl. She had a good job and she was happy.”