Authors: Brad Latham
“Strangled,” Lockwood repeated, trying to give some reality to it. Just a few hours before she had been alive, young, beautiful.
People like that didn’t die. Not in his personal life. In his profession, yes, but this was different —this was reality, this
was his apartment, his sanctuary.
He searched for a cigarette, couldn’t find one, and Jimbo handed him a Lucky. He lighted it, and drew in gratefully. “You
don’t know who did it,” he said finally.
“Nope. We were hoping you might be able to help us on that one,” Jimbo answered, and again the warmth that was usually there
was missing. A troubled look crept over Jimbo’s face. “Christ, Hook, if you know anything, don’t stall me. You know sooner
or later we’ll find out.”
“I didn’t do it, Jimbo.”
“Where were you, Hook?”
“With—a lady,” he answered.
“I’ll need more than that.”
“Not now,” Lockwood said. “She has her reputation—”
“It could be a question of her losing her reputation or you losing your life,” Brannigan informed him quietly.
“I didn’t do it, Jimbo. You know me better than that.”
“I’ve known lots of people who couldn’t have done the things they did. But they did them anyway.”
“Give me a little time, Jimbo. That’s all I’m asking for. A little time. This has to be connected with the Dearborn case,
somehow. Either that—or Toomey,” he concluded.
“A little revenge, you think?” Jimbo asked, hopeful. It was obvious he’d give anything to keep the murderer from being Lockwood.
“Could be. Let me check it out. That, and a couple of other things.”
Brannigan sighed, a great, long, deep, Irish sigh. “All right. Stay in the city, of course.”
“Of course.”
He walked past Brannigan, and through the door, then through the living room, and down the hallway. He opened the door. “Hook,”
it was Brannigan’s voice, and he turned. “Hook—Hook. I’m—sorry.” He turned again and left, quietly closing the door behind
him.
He took a cab to Muffy’s. He had to see her first.
She opened the door partway when he rang and looked startled when she saw him.
“I’ve got to speak to you,” he said, noticing her uncertainty.
“Not now.”
“Now.” His voice was firm, and she wavered and finally let him in.
She was dressed only in a wrapper, her hair askew. “I’m sorry if I’ve come at an inconvenient time,” he began.
“You have,” she answered sharply. “Please say what you have to say and get out of here.
Mr
. Hook.”
He sat down on the sofa, but this time she didn’t come near him, just stood there, impatient, maybe a little uneasy.
“Did Stephanie have any enemies?”
“What?”
“Did Stephanie have any enemies that you know of?”
“My God! You come here and annoy me about my
maid?”
“Stephanie’s dead.”
She didn’t say anything, just looked at him, then sank slowly into the chair behind her, one hand absently smoothing back
her hair. A questioning look formed on her face, but still she said nothing.
“Someone strangled her.”
There was fear now in Muffy’s face. “Does it—it have something to do with
me?”
“I don’t know.”
“My God! First the jewels, then Jabber-Jabber, and now Stephanie. It—it could be
me
next!”
Lockwood regarded her coldly, and felt faintly sick with himself. How could this cold and totally selfish woman have ever
attracted him? “Possibly, Muffy,” he said, enjoying her fear a little. “So it could pay you considerably to spill whatever
you know.”
Muffy’s voice quivered with hysteria. “I don’t know anything, I tell you,” she cried, her voice going harsh. “Get out of here!
No!” she implored, as he rose. “Don’t go away! I need you! I need someone to protect me!”
She fell into the chair again, sobbing, for once all her dollars not enough to protect her, not enough to keep this terror
from overtaking her, sending its chill coursing through her veins.
For a moment she was silent. Her wrapper had fallen open, and her naked breast was exposed, but this time it held no attraction
for Lockwood. He was about to leave when he heard a small sound. “What’s that?” he asked.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“A kind of rustling—from your bedroom.”
Muffy looked confused, then frightened. “Nothing. It couldn’t have been anything.”
He didn’t like her look, the tone of her voice. His hand went to the .38, and he drew it out. Her eyes widened when she saw
it. “Nothing!” she cried again.
“Probably,” he shrugged, “but I’ll check anyway.”
He edged cautiously into the bedroom. The covers were in disarray. Muffy had been napping, probably, he thought, when I rang
the doorbell. He checked the bathroom. Nothing there. His gaze swept along the bottoms of the draperies by the windows, but
no one seemed to be behind them. He moved over toward them, pushing his body against the heavy cloths, but there was nothing
there by the wall. The blinds were drawn, and cautiously he pulled them back, on the chance someone was outside, on the window
ledge. Nothing but the green of Central Park met his view.
He dropped to the floor, gun ready, and looked underneath the massive bed, but again drew a blank.
He was perspiring as he rose, the closed windows of the room choking it with the summer heat. The sound came again, and this
time he realized the source. It had emanated from the bedroom’s closet.
He edged up alongside it, his back against the wall, his hand reaching for the knob of the door. A quick flick of his wrist,
and he flung it open, gun ready.
There was a rustling, tearing sound, and he leapt to one side as a naked body hurtled past him, thudding onto the floor, leaving
a trail of clothing behind it, the clothes in the closet ripping off their hangers as the body crashed through them.
Muffy was at the doorway now, eyes wide as they both regarded the form before them. It stirred a bit, the head rising, then
falling, cheek against rug. It was Cracks Henderson.
Lockwood turned toward Muffy. “You don’t want for boyfriends, do you?” He looked again at Cracks, whose pale body was blotched
with red. “But next time you get caught with one, don’t stuff him into a closet on a day as hot as this one. Even guys in
better shape than Cracks would collapse with heat prostration.”
The Hook was still trying to figure it out as he reached the street. Cracks Henderson. Cracks Henderson and Muffy Dearborn.
It didn’t add up. What the hell was she doing in the hay with him? She wasn’t the type to sleep with the hired help, and that’s
all Cracks ever seemed to be with her. True, he’d been eyeing her hungrily at the opening night party, but he hadn’t even
been dirt in her eyes, because he was less than that. When she’d looked at him, she’d seen nothing. Zip. Zero. So why? Why
now? Or was he reading her completely wrong?
His concentration was broken by Jimmy the Newsie, who, he finally realized, was tugging at his elbow. Had been for some moments.
His lip curled.
“What are you doing here? I can’t believe I’m seeing you again, after you set me up to get creamed.”
“1 didn’t have nothin’ to do with it, believe me, Mr. Lockwood,” Jimmy told him, giving him the “Mister” in an attempt to
insinuate himself back into Lockwood’s good graces. “You know the grapevine. Do anything in the underworld, and ten minutes
later, every hotshot in a radius of twenty miles knows what’s goin’ on. Thirty miles,” he corrected himself.
“Maybe,” Lockwood admitted. “So what’s up? What do you want?”
“News. I got news,” Jimmy said with hope, his hand automatically reaching out, palm up. By now it was an unconscious reflex.
Lockwood took out a five and handed it to him. Jimmy looked at it, grinned gratefully, and gave The Hook value due.
“Stymie,” he said, in his excitement forgetting to keep his lips firm over his teeth, revealing the gaps where several no
longer existed. “Stymie’s been worked over bad, real bad.”
“So?” Lockwood asked. He’d had an urge to mess up Stymie once or twice himself, if there’d been a way he’d been able to accomplish
it without touching him.
“So this. I know what you’re working on. And the talk in the street is that Stymie got it because of the Dearborn jewels.”
The door to Stymie’s shop was as old and dark and ugly as before, and the bells jangled just as discordantly. Stymie’s voice,
however, was different. This time there was fear in it. “Who’s there?” it asked, tremulous.
“Bill Lockwood.”
“Oh! Mr. Lockwood!” The fence’s voice was its old repellently unctuous self again. “What a pleasure. A real pleasure!”
Lockwood moved into the bowels of the shop, seeking out Stymie in the dimness. Finally he found him, deep in a ratty-looking
chair in the rear.
“You’ll pardon me if I don’t rise, Mr. Lockwood,” Stymie apologized, the oil thick around the words. “But I’ve—I’ve been ill.”
“I heard about it. Sudden illness, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. Very sudden.”
“That’s why I’m here, Stymie.”
Fright added a new aura of repulsiveness to the fence’s face. “You’re—you’re not involved in this, too?”
“I’m not here to cream you, Stymie, if that’s what you mean.”
A cackle of relief wheezed out of Stymie. “I should have known better, Mr. Lockwood. Forgive me. I’ve had—a bad time.”
As his eyes became accustomed to the murky light of the shop, Lockwood began to see the contusions. Stymie was a mass of welts
and bumps and bruises, one eye half-closed. “Who did it, Stymie?”
“I—I fell.”
“Don’t give me that, Stymie. I know somebody came in and knocked you around.”
“I don’t remember.”
“The Dearborn jewels, Stymie.”
“What about them?” Stymie dabbed at the thickish fluid that constantly ran from his eyes, cautiously trying not to touch his
wounds.
“You got it because of the Dearborn jewels. That’s the word.”
“I don’t feel good. I’ve got to lie down.” He tried to rise.
The Hook placed a hand against the frail chest, and Stymie subsided. “I’m not here to hurt you, Stymie. But I know you’re
involved in this Dearborn thing somehow, and I’m not going to leave till you tell me how.”
“All right. Could you—could you get me a fresh glass of water?” Stymie indicated the clouded jelly glass by his side, and
a curtain at the rear of the shop. Lockwood picked up the glass, its sides gritty and smudged with grease, and walked to the
back, pushed aside the curtain, and turned on the faucet that hung over the filthy little basin, patches of dull white showing
through the brown and yellow. He let the water run till it grew cold, filled the glass, and moved back toward Stymie. On the
way, his eye skimmed Stymie’s collection of jade.
“Okay,” he said, handing the glass to Stymie, and waited for him to gurgle some of it down. “Give.”
Stymie put down the glass and tightly crossed his body with both arms, as if trying vainly to warm himself, although it must
have been ninety degrees in the place. “All right. I fenced the jewels.”
“Who brought them in?”
“You know I can’t tell you that.”
“Who, Stymie, who?”
“Hit me, beat me, kick me, do whatever you like, it don’t matter. If I tell you who, I’ll be dead anyway. You know that.”
“Okay, so you fenced the jewels. What next?”
“Then I—I sold them.”
“To whom?”
“To an interested party.”
“Who, Stymie? That part won’t get you killed, we both know that.”
“How do
I
know?” the fence whined.
“All right, we’ll come back to that. Who beat you up? One of Toomey’s boys?”
“I can’t say.”
“One-Eye. Widwer Levinskey.”
“I can’t say. All I can tell you is that whoever did this to me wanted the jewels. I’d promised to sell them to them once
I had the merchandise firmly in my possession.”
“And?”
“And—and instead I got tempted. They went to someone else.”
“You won’t tell me who worked you over.”
“If I do, the next time they might kill me.”
Stymie was a shambles of fear now, and Lockwood almost felt sorry for him. “All right. That could be so. But let’s get back
to the purchaser, Stymie. Him you can tell me about.”
“I’m afraid to talk about anything. I don’t want to be dead.”
“You’re letting this beating screw you up, Stymie. The guy you sold the jewels to can’t be in the same league with the guys
who sold the stuff and whoever beat you up.”
“I guess you’re right.” He didn’t look too convinced.
“All right then. Who was he?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“Jesus Christ.” Lockwood moved in a couple of inches on Stymie, his shoulders hunching in anger.
“I—I really don’t know who he was. He’d never been to the shop until he came about the jewels.”
“What happened?”
“He came twice. The first time he told me he wanted the jewels. I told him they were already spoken for.”
“And he upped the ante.”
“Something like that.”
“And left with the jewels?”
“Not that time, no. He didn’t have—what I wanted. He had to leave, and then two days later, he returned. And this time I gave
him the jewels.”
“He didn’t pay you in money, did he, Stymie?”
“What?”
“Another few thousand couldn’t have got you to risk your life.”
Fear and uncertainty and a hint of desperate greed registered in Stymie’s face. “I—I don’t know what you mean,” he stammered.
“Never mind. The guy who got the jewels. What did he look like?”
“No one I’d ever seen before, like I say. Looked clean. Not like someone who’d had problems with the law.”
“Describe him. Physically.”
“Well—blond, kind of good-looking, I guess, although—I suppose his face lacked some character. Kind of blocky looking, sort
of square-faced, a little puffy, maybe, about the cheeks. Pale. Very pale.”
“Cracks Henderson.”
“What?”
“Muffy Dearborn’s accompanist.”
Stymie looked genuinely confused. “What?”
“You sold Muffy Dearborn’s jewels to the guy who plays piano for her.”