Coward's Kiss

  “Hell, you were right.” She looked at me. “When you said you could cry on cue,” I explained.

  She looked away. “Just shut up,” she said. “Or I’ll hit you in the stomach. At least I get a chance to play nurse. You’re going to bed now, Ed.”

  “Like hell I am.”

  “Ed—”

  “I couldn’t fall asleep if I wanted to. And I don’t want to. Things are coming to a head, Maddy. A whole slew of two-legged bombs are running around waiting to go off.”

  “And you want to be blown up?”

  “I want to be there. I want to watch the explosion, set off a bomb or two of my own.”

  “You should go right to sleep.”

  I shook my head, which was a mistake. It ached. “I wouldn’t stay here anyway. I was letting them come to me, Maddy. It made sense before. Now I’d rather be a moving target. I have to start things on my own.”

  “Then go to a hotel. In the morning——”

  “The morning’s too late.”

  She sighed. It was a long and very female sigh. She really wanted to put me to bed and tuck me in and listen to my prayers. The mother instinct dies hard.

  “All right,” she said sadly. “Where are you going to start?”

  “Probably with Armin.”

  “Armin?”

  “The little man who was waiting for me last night. Mr. Neatness and Light. His name’s Peter Armin and he’s staying at a midtown hotel. I think he’ll be glad to see me.”

  “Why him?”

  “Because I know where he is. Because I know who he is, as far as that goes. And because I think he’ll help me.”

  “Why should he?”

  I stood up. “Because I may be able to help him,” I said. “Say, you didn’t come up with anything, did you? About Clay?”

  She looked stunned. She made a small fist out of one hand and used it to tap herself on the jaw. Then she sat there shaking her head from side to side at me.

  “I completely forgot,” she said. “God, I’m stupid. How can I be so stupid? I was so busy listening to you and all that I forgot all about it.”

  “All about what?”

  “It’s probably nothing,” she said. “I chased all over town looking for that director, Ed, and I couldn’t find him. Nobody knew just where he was. He’s a periodic drunk or something and he was missing his period. Or having it.”

  I waited for her to get to the point. If I knew who Clay was, I didn’t necessarily have to bother with Armin. Because Clay was the boy I needed, the missing factor in the equation.

  He had the briefcase.

  “So I couldn’t find him,” she was saying. “But I got hold of another guy, one who collects fists of angels so hard-up producers can hunt up soft touches. He had the list for ‘Hungry Wedding’!”

  “And Clay was on it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Huh?”

  “There was no Mr. Clay,” she said. “But then I got the bright idea that Clay could be a first name instead of a last name. So I went through the list again and found a man named Clayton. That’s his first name. They didn’t have his address.”

  I let out a lot of breath. “That has to be him. What was his last name?”

  “Just a minute. It’s on the tip of my tongue, Ed. It was something like Rail but that wasn’t it. Kale? Crail? Oh, damn it to hell——”

  “Maddy——”

  “Oh, it’s nothing to worry about. I wrote it down, for Pete’s sake. I’m just so darn mad that I couldn’t remember it. Just a minute—it’s somewhere in my purse.”

  I waited while she rummaged through a purse and kept saying darn it. Then she managed to find her wallet, took it out and managed to find a slip of paper. She looked at it and smiled proudly at me.

  “This is the one,” she said, very positively. “No address, just the name.”

  I told her to read it.

  “Clayton Bannister,” she read calmly. “Does that mean anything?”

  EIGHT

  THE human equation picked itself up, dusted itself off and crawled furtively into the woodwork. I wanted to get down on all fours and crawl after it. Everything had worked out so neatly, so flawlessly. Bannister and Armin wanted the briefcase and Clay had the briefcase and——

  Sure they did, London.

  I told Maddy all about it and watched her eyes bulge.

  Two suspects had turned into one, with Clay and Bannister the two sides of the same damn coin.

  “Then,” she wanted to know, “who has the briefcase?”

  Briefcase, briefcase, who’s got the briefcase. “It’s a good question,” I told her. “We’ll have to find out. Now.”

  I grabbed a jacket and a hat and we got out of the apartment. I locked the door and pitched a key under the mat for Cora. Then we left the building.

  She wanted me to buy her dinner but I managed to talk her out of the idea of a real meal. Instead we found a deli with a pair of formica-topped tables in the rear. A moon-faced man with bushy eyebrows brought us pastrami sandwiches on fresh rye and two bottles of cold Dutch beer. The apron covering his beer belly was spotless, probably because he didn’t wipe his dirty hands on it.

  Every once in a while an indefatigable cockroach scurried across the floor at our feet. Even this couldn’t spoil our appetites. We wolfed down the sandwiches and swilled beer and got out of there.

  “Now I put you in a cab and send you home,” I said optimistically.

  She wasn’t having any. “I’m going with you, Ed.”

  “Don’t be——”

  “Silly? I’m not being silly.”

  “I wasn’t going to say that.”

  “Oh? What were you going to say?”

  “I was going to say Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Darn it, Ed——”

  “One of two things could happen or both,” I told her. “You could get hurt or you could get in the way. I don’t want either one. Therefore——”

  “There’s another alternative, Ed. I could be of help. To tell the truth, I don’t see how you get along without me. You may be a brilliant detective but you forget the elementary things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like Clayton Bannister,” she said. “God, you didn’t even look him up in the phone book. You know his full name and you leave it alone.”

  “He won’t be listed.”

  “Are you sure? So sure you won’t take the trouble to look?”

  Arguing with Maddy was like swimming in a vat of mercury. There was no future in it. We ducked into a drugstore and I went through the Manhattan and Bronx books, the only ones on hand. There were twenty-one Bannisters in Manhattan and nine in the Bronx and none of them was named Clayton. One guy was listed as C Bannister and Maddy wanted me to call him. I told her he lived on Essex Street and our boy wasn’t going to turn up in a Lower East Side slum.

  So she made me call Information and check on the possibility of a Clayton Bannister in Brooklyn or Queens. The operator was a good sport. She checked. No Clayton Bannister in Brooklyn, none in Queens. Not even one on Staten Island.

  So I won the battle and lost the war. I couldn’t get rid of Maddy. She had to come along, had to help me find Armin.

  We used the drugstore’s back door in case one of Bannister’s little men was doing a shadow job. We wound up in an alley, followed it to the nearest street and caught the first cab that came by. We hopped into the back seat and I felt like the all-American folk hero, with an arm around Maddy, a hand on the Beretta in my pocket. All I needed was a hip flask.

  I had an insane urge to shout FOLLOW THAT CAR! at our driver. But there was no car in front of us. So that killed that.

  The Ruskin was a throwback to better times. It stood twelve stories tall at the corner of Eighth Avenue and Forty-fourth Street and remembered the days when the West Side was the best side, which was a long time ago. Now Broadway was fast-buck alley and Eighth Avenue was Whore Row.

  The Ruskin stared across early
-evening Eighth Avenue, watching whores bloom in doorways like pretty weeds in a dying garden. The lobby was filled with overstuffed Edwardian chairs. The ceiling was high and dripped with chandeliers. We walked to the front desk while thirty or forty years seem to slip away and disappear.

  I watched expressions play across the face of the middle-aged desk clerk. Maddy and I weren’t married—she wasn’t wearing a ring. And we weren’t toting luggage. But it was damned early for adultery, wasn’t it? And we didn’t look like whore and customer.

  He just about had his mind made up to take a chance on us when we disappointed him. I told him I wanted to talk to Room 1104 on the house phone. He did a very sad double take, then pointed to a phone on the desk and scuttled for the switchboard. Midway through the first ring Peter Armin picked up the phone and said hello to me.

  “Ed London,” I said. “Can I come up?”

  A small and brief sigh came over the wire. “I am delighted,” he said. “I’ll be most happy to see you. Where are you?”

  “In the lobby.”

  He chuckled appreciatively. “Magnificent,” he said. “You give little advance warning, Mr. London. Would you wait five minutes or so, then come straight up?”

  I told him that was fine, put the phone down. I asked the clerk at the desk if the hotel had a bar. He pointed through a wide doorway and I took Maddy by the arm and led her toward it.

  “I don’t want a drink,” she said. “Why don’t we stay in the lobby?”

  “Because Bannister may have the place watched. Maybe his man missed us on the way in. If we sit around the lobby he’s sure to spot us.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” I told her. “But I need a drink.”

  The bar matched the lobby. It was more along the lines of an old-style taproom than a hotel bar. I asked for Courvoisier and while the barman poured my drink Maddy changed her mind and ordered a Daiquiri.

  “I thought you weren’t having any.”

  “I wasn’t,” she said. “Ed, I’m worried.”

  “I told you to go home.”

  She shook her head impatiently. “I’d worry even more if you were here without me. Look, how do you know what we’re walking into? He could have a trap for us.”

  “Trap? Hell, all he’ll do is sit there with a gun in his hand. He’ll do that just as a matter of course to make sure I’m not here with Bannister at my heels. But he won’t try to trap me. He trapped me before in my own apartment, for God’s sake. He doesn’t want me. He wants the briefcase.”

  “So does Bannister. And look what his men did to you.”

  I told her Bannister and Armin were different men. Their minds worked differently.

  She picked up her glass, finished most of it in one swallow. “What are you going to say to him?”

  “That we should cooperate.”

  “Huh?”

  “He wants a briefcase,” I said. “I want a killer. That doesn’t mean we have to fight each other. I’ve got a hunch he’s in a spot like mine. I think he must be working alone. He could probably use somebody on his side.”

  “And you’ll be on his side?”

  I couldn’t tell whether she approved or disapproved. She read the line perfectly straight.

  I sipped cognac. I said: “I’m not sure. I’ll have to see how it goes upstairs. If nothing else, we can probably pool information. He must know the answers to a hell of a lot of questions.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like what’s in the briefcase and what’s so important about it. Like why the girl was killed and where she fits into the picture. I’m in the middle of everything and I don’t know what it’s all about, Maddy. Armin can be of help.”

  “If he wants to.”

  “Well, sure,” I said. “If he wants to.”

  We left the elevator and found Room 1104 without a hell of a lot of trouble. I knocked on the door and Armin’s voice told us to come in.

  He was sitting in a chair with a gun in his hand. Every time I saw him he was sitting with a gun in his hand. This one was a Beretta like the first. It was the mate to the one in my pocket.

  “This is getting monotonous,” I said. He lowered the gun and Maddy relaxed her grip on my arm.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” Peter Armin said. “You understand, of course. I didn’t know for certain that you’d be alone. But that’s impolite, isn’t it? You’re not alone. I don’t believe I’ve met the young lady.”

  “My secretary.”

  He nodded with majestic understanding. He was dressed well, almost too well. He wore a pair of light-gray flannel slacks and a lime-green Paisley shirt with a button-down collar. The shirt was open at the neck. He wasn’t wearing a tie. His shoes and socks were black.

  “This room is really too small,” he said. “Only the one chair. If you’d care to sit on the bed——”

  We sat on the bed.

  “I’m glad you came in person,” he went on. “I was afraid you might wish to talk on the phone. I really cannot do business over the telephone. The personal element is lost.”

  He killed a little time finding his pack of cigarettes and offering them around. We thanked him and passed them up. He lit a cigarette for himself, smoked thoughtfully.

  “You’ve decided to sell me the briefcase, Mr. London?”

  I killed time on my own by filling a pipe and lighting it. Maddy got a cigarette and I lit it for her. The three of us sat and smoked.

  Finally I said: “You’re a reasonable man, Armin.”

  “I try to be.”

  “Then let me set up a logical argument. Will you hear me out?”

  “With pleasure.”

  “Good,” I said. “Now let’s postulate that I don’t have the briefcase, don’t know much about it. Can you accept that?”

  “As a postulate.”

  “Good. Bannister’s men paid me a visit this afternoon. They came to my apartment. There were two of them. A talker named Ralph and a gorilla named Billy.”

  “I was afraid that would happen,” he said ruefully. “I tried to warn you, Mr. London.”

  “Sure, but I didn’t have the briefcase. Don’t forget that postulate we’re working on.”

  “I see.”

  I drew on my pipe and blew out smoke. “The way I see it, you and Bannister are on opposite sides of the fence.”

  “Precisely. And it’s a high fence, Mr. London.”

  “You and I are reasonable men. Bannister is not. If I have to take sides, your side is the natural one to pick.”

  He nodded with obvious approval. “That only stands to reason,” he said. “As you may remember, it was my whole point in our . . . conference last evening. A choice of mind over muscle, one might almost say.”

  “Uh-huh.” I looked at him. “So where are we? You and I are natural allies. Bannister’s our natural enemy. You want to get hold of a briefcase. I want to get Bannister for murder—Alicia Arden’s murder.”

  He nodded.

  “The briefcase is worth ten grand to you——”

  “More, really. But I can only pay ten thousand.”

  “So call it ten thousand. And nailing Bannister to an electric chair is worth a lot of time and effort to me.”

  “A worthy aim, Mr. London.”

  I smiled. It was easy to like Armin. You can’t hate a man who speaks your own language, can’t despise a guy whose mind works the way your own mind works. Every time he opened his mouth I liked him a little bit more.

  “What I’m proposing,” I said, “is a sort of holy alliance.”

  “Against Bannister?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Go on,” he said. “Your proposition sounds appealing.”

  “We work together,” I said. “We pool information—you’ve probably got more to contribute than I do—and we join forces. You help me pin down Bannister and I help you get the briefcase. If I get my hands on it I give it to you for five thousand dollars—half of what it’s worth to you. If you get i
t alone, it’s yours free and clear.”

  He stubbed out his cigarette very elaborately in a small glass ashtray. “I’d pay you the five thousand in any event,” he said slowly. “I really would prefer it that way. Otherwise you’d have reason to work at cross-purposes with me under certain circumstances. If either of us recovers the briefcase, you’ll still get five thousand dollars.”

  I said that was fine.

  He thought some more. “One thing disturbs me, Mr. London. How can you be certain that I won’t run off and leave you to chase Mr. Bannister alone once I’ve got the briefcase? Or that I’ll pay you for it?”

  “I can’t.”

  He turned both palms upward. His gun was tucked into the arm of the chair. “Then——”

  “By the same token,” I said, “how can you be sure I won’t let you go to hell once I get Bannister? We’re both taking a chance, Armin. I don’t mind trusting you. I think you’re trustworthy.”

  He laughed, delighted. “Perhaps I am,” he admitted. “Up to a point. Do you know something? I really believe now that you don’t have that briefcase, Mr. London. And that you never did have it at all.”

  “I told you that before.”

  “But I didn’t believe you before.”

  “And you believe me now?”

  He produced his pack of Turkish cigarettes again, offered them around again, lit one again for himself. “Do you know anything about confidence men, Mr. London?”

  “A little.”

  “I’ve had some experience in that area,” he said confidentially. “One does so many things in order to survive. Are you familiar with the First Law of Con?”

  I wasn’t.

  “Very simply: If the mark does not see your point of profit, you may sell him real estate on the planet Jupiter. If, so far as he can see, there’s no reason for you to be swindling him, you can steal him blind.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He smiled pleasantly. “So,” he said. “For a moment let’s take a different postulate. Let us assume that you do indeed possess the briefcase. If so, what possible advantage could you hope to gain by this meeting tonight? You want to get five thousand for the case when I’ve already offered you ten. I have to assume you’re telling the truth, Mr. London. Otherwise I can’t see your point of profit.”