Black Cat Weekly #13

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 4MURDER ON HIS MIND

SOMEBODY brought me a goblet of muscatel instead of beer when I sat down at the table with the boys. I knew the stuff was poison to me, but I drank it anyway. It didn’t seem to matter much. The boys wouldn’t let me pay for any drinks. The bearded Basserty had picked a winner for them, so they were temporarily masters of their fate and businesses.

“You bought this afternoon,” said Basserty, “and we got lucky after you left. Twenty to one.”

“I said ‘A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse,’” declared Shakey, “so old Basserty, he comes up with one.”

It was a weird evening. Knotty and the Professor snored peacefully. Shakey muttered of the villainy of cops and quoted the Bard. The Killer punched his way through forgotten fights. Basserty rode down the stretch again on horses that had long been dead.

The night flowed swiftly on, until nearly three. I must leave. I must see Ginny. I got to my feet, walked toward the door. My legs felt numb and my head was spinning, but somehow I managed to get to Fourth Street, where Ginny peeled for Vince Parada’s slumming customers.

Sweet wine does funny things to a man. All of a sudden I felt weak. I began shaking and jerking like a burleycue babe doing the bumps.

But just then I saw Ginny coming out of the club, and I wasn’t weak any longer. I was angry again. Because Ginny wasn’t alone. A big guy was with her. The guy was tall, dark and handsome, dressed in dinner clothes and a black felt hat. He and Ginny seemed to be on intimate terms. The guy was Vince Parada, who owned the club. Because thrill-seeking debutantes and bored society women go for racket guys like Parada, he had been a figure in several scandals and divorce suits.

This was the guy who paid Ginny a weekly salary to take her clothes off in public. I walked slowly toward Ginny and the guy. When I was a few feet away I started a haymaker. Mr. Vincento Parada, pretty dinner jacket and all, lay down on the sidewalk.

Ginny recognized me and stifled the scream in her throat.

“Beat it,” she said. “Quick. The apartment. I’ll be there.”

I came to my senses and started running to the Sheridan Square subway station. At that time of morning you wait a long time for a train, but a local finally roared along.

At Ginny’s apartment house I tiptoed up two flights of stairs. When I tapped lightly, on Ginny’s door she opened it.

“You poor, jealous jerk,” she said.

Inside, she handed me a big slug of whisky I drank down without a chaser. After a minute the shaking stopped.

“Aren’t you in enough trouble?” Ginny asked. “Every cop in town is looking for a guy with a scar on his face. So you have to sock Vince Parada who knows them all.”

“Did he recognize me?” I asked.

“No,” replied Ginny. “He never knew what hit him. I told him it was some drunken bum. I guess I told the truth.”

“What makes you think the cops are looking for me?” I asked.

“I read the papers,” said Ginny. “So I gather that the cops want to talk to Mr. George Spelvin, Room Six-sixteen, the Sheridan Towers Hotel. Were you really shacking up with the dame? Did you kill her?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I think somebody was sticking a shiv in her about the same time you were slapping my face the other day.”

“I’m sorry about slapping you,” she said. “You shouldn’t needle me about the way I earn a living. But I do like to eat.”

She poured another drink and handed it to me.

“Tell me what really happened,” she said.

I told her what I thought had happened, all the details I could remember. After I’d finished, she said; “It’s funny, all right.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m laughing.”

Wanting to kiss her made me jealous again.

“What were you letting that cheap mobster maul you for?” I asked.

“He wasn’t mauling me,” said Ginny. “He was just telling me his troubles. He’s got the same troubles you have—Mrs. Malcolm Little.”

“What?” I roared.

“Keep your voice down,” said Ginny. “When she was Danise Darlan she worked for him, and they were that way, it seems. He’s all upset about them shoving her beautiful body in an ice box at the morgue. Vince is sensitive.”

“Listen,” I said. “Has Vince seemed to have something on his mind the past few days?”

“I wouldn’t know,” she replied. “He has been in Miami the past week.”

“Did he bring back any palm trees to prove he’d been in Florida?” I asked.

“What are you getting at?” Ginny asked.

“Just this,” I said. “Mrs. Malcolm Little, or Danise Darlan, registered for Room Six-seventeen at the Sheridan Towers as Mrs. J. K. Provost. A guy named J. K. Provost has been occupying the room for the past week.”

“Maybe you’ve got something,” she said. “Vince likes tools, carries a little case of miniature ones in his pocket. Some of them could make a nice hole in a woman’s heart.”

“Honey,” I said, “I’m going to tell all this to Chet. He’s got a line into Headquarters through a pal of his. He can get the Miami alibi checked. Play up to Vince yourself. He might spill something.”

“I’ll probably have to let him maul me if I do,” she said. “I’m kind of particular about who I let maul me.”

“How about me?” I asked.

“You can kiss me good night,” she said. “Then go get some sleep. You look dead ….”

It was after six o’clock in the morning when I reached the Bowery and got a room for a day and night in the Castle, a flophouse up the street from Grogan’s, with a sense of well-being. I could see my way out of the mess now. Vince Parada and J. K. Provost were one and the same. Vince even carried the murder weapon around with him. All we had to do was prove he hadn’t been in Miami.

When I awakened I didn’t have too bad a hangover. But I wanted a cigarette. I fumbled through my pockets on the off-chance I’d find a loose butt. My hand plunged through a big hole in the lining, came in contact with something that felt like a little wooden cylinder.

I fished the thing out. It was two half-cylinders screwed together, varnished bright yellow. The name “Inter-City Ice Co.” was printed on it in red letters. Suddenly I remembered the ice truck outside Frayne’s.

I unscrewed the thing. One half of the cylinder was the handle of an ice pick. The other was a sheath. The sharply pointed steel pick was stained with something brownish. Something kind of gummy.

Something like blood.

* * * *

I sat looking at the thing that might have been stuck in a woman’s heart. I had no idea how it had got into the lining of my coat. Maybe someone had slipped the thing into my pocket while I was at Frayne’s bar.

You had use for an ice pick only to crack ice. You cracked ice only if you had an old-fashioned ice box. Ginny had an old-fashioned ice box. I had cracked ice the afternoon that Ginny slapped me, with an ice pick exactly like the one in my hand. The afternoon the red haze swam in front of my eyes. The afternoon the woman was murdered.

I hurried into my clothes. I ran down the steps, found a phone and dialed Ginny’s number. When she said “Hello,” her voice sounded sleepy.

“It’s me,” I said. “The jealous jerk. Sorry to wake you up, but I’ve got to ask you something.”

“I’d think you would be sorry,” she said. “I haven’t had enough sleep for a working girl.”

“Listen, Ginny,” I said. “You know that little ice pick you have in the kitchen? The one with the two wooden parts that screw together? I want to know where you got it.”

“Let me think,” she said. She sounded wide-awake now. “Oh, I got it at Frayne’s. One day the ice man gave Frayne a whole handful of them, and I asked him for one.”

“Have you got it now?” I asked.

“I—I think so. I keep it in the drawer of the kitchen table.”

“Look and see if it’s still there, Ginny.”

She said, “Hold the phone.”

Finally I heard her voice again. “Terry, it isn’t there. I looked everywhere else it could have been, too. I just can’t find it. What’s this all about, Terry? Whatever it is, I know you didn’t do anything wrong. I love you, darling. I want to help.”

“There’s nothing much you can do right now.” I told her. “Except maybe make like a lady Sherlock with our friend Vince. ’Bye now, kitten. Don’t let your G-string slip.”

It was the first time that Ginny had said she loved me, right out like that. It made me feel good. But almost at once my feeling of elation changed to one of suspicion. Had Vince Parada been in her apartment during the time he was supposed to be in Florida? Ginny knew I was going to be in Room 616, and she might have told him and he figured out a way of making me the fall guy. But Vince Parada had had no opportunity whatsoever of putting the blood-stained ice pick in my pocket.

Unless—

And that possibility hit me below the belt. I’d been in Ginny’s place last night. It would have been easy enough for her to slip the ice pick into the pocket of my coat.

Outside, Sanitation Department men were tossing the contents of waste cans into the maw of one of those big garbage-grinding trucks. I tossed the little ice pick into a garbage can and the grinder chewed it up with the other junk.

I bought the afternoon papers at a corner stand. The only thing new about the murder was that Mr. Malcolm Little had voluntarily surrendered to police. He had been staying at the Harvard Club because he said his wife had left for Boston on a visit and he had not wanted to remain at his country place alone. On the day of the murder he had remained in his office until three o’clock, then had walked all the way up to the Harvard Club and had gone to his room. He had not heard of the murder until he listened to a news broadcast. He had immediately telephoned his lawyer, who accompanied him to Police Headquarters. Pie had not been detained by the police.

Strolling around the streets with the other drifters, I saw the Professor and Shakey sitting in a doorway. They looked terrible, had evidently spent all their winnings of the day before. I told them I’d take them over to the Palace and buy a fancy drink. At the saloon Basserty came in and asked me if I had the price of an Armstrong and a Form. I gave him money and when he went out the Killer came in, accompanied by Knotty, the dwarf. Knotty was almost in tears because he’d lost his monocle. I slipped him a buck to buy another.