The Body Lovers Read online

  “You let anybody use your room?”

  “Who the hell wants to use this dump?”

  “I didn’t ask that.”

  “No,” she said.

  I stepped over the guy on the floor. He was breathing heavily through his nose and a trickle of blood was dribbling down his chin. I opened the door of the closet. The same rack of clothes and suitcase was there that I had seen last night.

  Virginia said, “You’d better blow, mister. He hates cops.”

  “Who is he, kid?”

  “Lorenzo Jones. He used to fight.”

  “He’s not doing so good right now.”

  “Just the same, he’s mean. Don’t think he won’t look for you.”

  I bent over and plucked Lorenzo Jones’ wallet from his pocket. He had five hundred and thirty bucks in it, a driver’s license issued to himself giving the hotel as his permanent address and two tickets to the fight at the Garden next week. “Where’s his room?”

  Virginia made a disgusted grimace. “Who knows? He’s got six girls in his string. Whoever’s empty that night is where he stays. He won’t pay for anything. He says he lives here. That’s a lot of bull. He used to before he took on the other girls.”

  “Let’s get back to last night again.”

  She sighed, squeezed her eyes shut and named the hotel, the room and the man as simply “Bud.” He was middle-aged, dark, had a trace of an accent and a scar on his chin. Lorenzo Jones had met her at their usual place at eleven o’clock, told her where to go and she went. The whole arrangement had been customary as far as she was concerned except that Jones had bragged about how he had taken the sucker for a bundle. Remorsefully, she added, “You know something, mister? Two years ago I was getting two hundred bucks a night every time.”

  “These streets go two ways, kid. You don’t have to stay around.”

  “Cut it out. Where the hell is there to go?”

  I threw Lorenzo’s wallet on the bed and reached down to jerk him to his feet. The voice from the doorway said, “Just hold it like that.”

  A pair of them stood there, one blocking the doorway with his body, the other slapping a billy against his palm suggestively. They were gutter punks trained in countless street brawls and the kind of predators who were turning the city into a shambles. They were in their late twenties, dangerous as hell because they liked what they were doing and were completely equipped for it.

  The first one sensed what I was going to do and moved like a cat. Before I could get the .45 in my hand he was on me, swung the billy in a flat arc and I got my arm up just in time to deflect it. The thing caught me high on the shoulder and my whole arm went numb. He started a backhand swing when I chopped a short one up between his legs. He let out a breathless yell, but I hadn’t caught him squarely enough and he was back again, cursing through his teeth. The other one came in from the door, launched a roundhouse right into my ribs, knocking me back against the bed and sending Virginia to the floor. He saved my neck because he knocked me out of the way of the billy, but I didn’t have time to think about it.

  Maybe they thought I was going to use my hands. They should have known I had been through the mill too. I braced myself, kicked out and smashed the second guy’s face to a pulp with my heels, rolled, got to my feet, stepped into the clear and let the one with the billy make another try for me. He came in grinning, tried to fake me out and brought his arm around. I went under it, caught his forearm, threw him into a lock and went against the elbow joint with such leverage that the bone splintered under my fingers and the guy jerked like a crazy puppet with the agonizing pain that tore through his body. For one second his mouth opened to scream, then he went limp in a faint and I let him drop to the floor. The other one was on his hands and knees, trying to get up. I kicked him in the face again and he flopped back like a big rag doll.

  Virginia Howell was crouched in the comer, hands pressed to her mouth, eyes great staring orbs of fear. There wouldn’t be any use trying to talk to her now. I picked up my hat and looked around.

  Lorenzo Jones was gone.

  I went downstairs and when the desk clerk saw me coming, he turned pale. He didn’t move when I grabbed his shirt front, didn’t make a sound when I backhanded him across the mouth three times. He was caught short and was paying for it, hoping the others would be as easy on him. While he watched, I picked up the phone, called Pat and told him what happened. Everything was turning screwy and we’d want a pickup on Greta Service no matter what the excuse would be, and one on Lorenzo Jones, which would be easy to make stick. He told me to stand by to give the details to the squad car that was on the way, but I didn’t have any intention of doing that at all. Those boys knew how to get what they wanted and the ones upstairs would still be here when they arrived.

  In fifteen minutes I was supposed to meet Velda. She was going to have to wait. I went back into the rain, walked two blocks north along the curb, trying to spot an empty cab, finally flagged one down and had him take me to the Proctor Building.

  The attendant in the lobby had just come on duty and told me the staff had already left for the day, but he was the same one who had been there last night and remembered me being with Dulcie. I told him she had asked me to get something from Theodore Gates’ office, that it was damn important and somebody’s head would roll if her wishes weren’t complied with. He was so eager to please that he called his assistant in to watch the lobby and took me upstairs himself.

  When we reached Gates’ office I went directly to his rotary card file and spun it around to the G’s. What I wanted was those symbols he had inscribed there and to get them translated. I thought I had missed her name and tried again, then a third time to be sure.

  Greta Service’s card was missing.

  The attendant was watching me closely. “Find what you needed, sir?”

  I didn’t answer him. Instead, I asked, “Who’s the receptionist on this floor?”

  He thought a moment, then: “A Miss Wald, I believe.”

  “I want her home phone.”

  “There’s probably a directory in the desk there.” He went to the top drawer, pulled out a slide and ran his finger down it. “Here you are.” He read the number off to me. I picked up the phone and dialed it. After four rings a young voice answered and I said, “Miss Wald, I’m calling for Theodore Gates. Was he in the office today?”

  “Why, yes, he was. He came in about ten, but canceled his appointments and left.”

  “Know where I can reach him?”

  “Did you try his home?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then I don’t know where he could be. You’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”

  I told her thanks and hung up. I found his home number, dialed it, let it ring a dozen times before I was sure there was nobody there, then hung up and jotted down his address.

  “Will that be all, sir?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “For now.”

  Gates had a combination studio apartment in a renovated brownstone in the Fifties. Two other photographers occupied the building and apparently the one on the bottom floor was working because the lights were on and the foyer door open. I went inside, up the stairs to the second floor and pushed the buzzer to Gates’ apartment.

  Nobody answered.

  I tried six picks on the lock before getting one that worked, stepped inside and felt for the light, the .45 tight in my fist. I flipped it on, moved sideways and covered the room. The place was a maze of equipment, smelling of hypo and water-colored backdrops, but it was empty. I tried each of the rooms to make sure. Theodore Gates wasn’t there. Two closets were still full of his clothes, his dresser drawers well filled and orderly, but there was no telling whether or not he had taken anything with him.

  In the studio itself was a desk cluttered with photographic supply catalogues and opened mail, another of those rotary files centered on it. I thumbed through this one too, but there was no Greta Service in it either. Along one side was a row of metal filing cabine
ts and I pulled out the one under “S.” A folder of proofs on Greta Service was there, all right, duplicates of the ones in the Proctor Building. I was about to shut the drawer when I noticed that the contents had been alphabetically arranged from the P’s to the T’s. Out of curiosity I thumbed the first few back.

  Then I saw the name Helen Poston.

  Only four proofs were in the folder, but they were enough. Teddy Gates had posed her so that every inch of her lush form was visible through the sheer Grecian gown, the same one Greta had modeled in. She wasn’t a Proctor Girl, but neither was Greta. It was too bad. They made the Proctor Girls look pretty sickly. I put the proofs back and tried the “D” file and came up with three on Maxine Delaney. The redhead wore a sarong, but the effect was the same. All woman, but no Proctor Girl. There was too much breast and thigh, too much inborn seductiveness rather than the lean emaciated look the fashion magazines demanded.

  I closed the drawers and checked the rotary file again.

  Neither Helen Poston nor Maxine Delaney had an index card there. That I could expect. They were both dead. Taking their photos out of the files would come with a general cleanup. But Greta Service’s had been there and wasn’t any longer.

  Any prints I might have left, I wiped off, then went downstairs, back to Broadway where I picked up a cab and headed for the Blue Ribbon.

  Velda had almost given me up and was on her last cup of coffee. Angie was trying to keep her company at a table in the back, but they had run out of conversation just as I arrived. She had sparks in her eyes and if there had been something to throw I would have caught it, but she took one look at my face where the guys at the Sandelor had worked me over and the anger subsided into an expression of concern and she grabbed for my hand.

  Angie brought me coffee and a sandwich and while I finished it I gave her the details. The little fine points I would liked to have elaborated on wouldn’t come out. They were still ideas that wouldn’t congeal into a solid and until they did they just lay there dormant, oozing through my mind, waiting to be recognized.

  Velda had had a phone pickup service put on the office line and the only ones who had called were Hy and Pat. Pat had two possibles on persons who had been convicted on sex charges, later paroled and were presumed to be in the area. Both were parole violators and an intensive search was on for both. The men who jumped me were in custody, accusing the desk clerk of having hired them to lay me out. I was supposed to go in and press charges. There was a tracer out for Lorenzo Jones, but a guy like that could disappear anywhere in New York. Virginia Howell came up with the names and addresses of his other women, but he wasn’t at any of those places.

  Hy wanted to see me as soon as possible. Al Casey had come up with something he wanted corroborated and I was to meet him at ten at his office.

  When Velda had given me the information she said, “What does it look like?”

  “It smells. When it gets this damn complicated there’s something else going on.”

  “I found the car Greta Service used. It was a rental job and she had it out twice. Both times it was registered to her and the mileage figures were nearly identical. The first time it was 118 miles, the second, 122.” She reached in her pocketbook and brought out a map of the New York, Jersey and Long Island area.

  “Figuring it as a round trip each way,” she said, “I laid out a general sixty-mile radius from the city. Here it is.” She shoved the map to me and sketched the circled area with her forefinger.

  “That’s a hell of a lot of square miles,” I told her.

  “We’re only interested in the perimeter.”

  “If she went directly to her target, yeah.”

  “We’ll have to assume some things. Anyway, she had Helen Poston with her and women don’t usually get too devious when they’re driving.”

  I traced the line of her circle, picking out the cities the line touched. Peculiarly, there weren’t many that it intersected at all. According to the diagram, the extent of Greta’s trip would have led her to some pretty remote spots.

  There was one that it did come close to, though. It was on Long Island and the name was Bradbury. I took out my pen and drew a circle around the town. “We’ll start here.”

  She looked across the table at me and nodded. “The origin of that letter Greta had.”

  “When Harry mentioned it she cut him off. It may mean something.”

  “I know the section, Mike. When I was a kid it was a very exclusive place for the wealthy. It’s come down a lot since the general population move to the suburbs, but there are still a lot of big people out that way.”

  “Who would Greta know there?” I asked her.

  “A beautiful woman might know anybody. At least it’s a lead. Supposing I check into a hotel out that way and see what I can do. I’ll call you when I’m located.”

  “You watch it. You’re a beautiful doll too.”

  “It’s about time you noticed.” She gave me a big grin. “And when I think of those lovely adjoining rooms going to waste ...”

  “I’m hurting too, kitten.”

  She looked at her left hand and the ring I had given her. “I can come closer to getting married than any girl in the world. Why did I have to pick you?”

  “Because we’re made for each other,” I told her. “Now get moving.”

  I could tell when Pat was burning. He stared at me with those cold eyes of his as if I were a suspect and let me go through my story for the third time around before he said, “Just tell me why you didn’t hold Greta Service.”

  “For what reason?”

  “You could have called me.”

  “Sure, and if there was something backing up this mess and she’s involved she would have clammed right up.”

  “That doesn’t cut it with me, Mike.”

  “No? I’d like to see what a lawyer would do to you if you tried it. I played it my way and that’s the way it is. Any word on Lorenzo Jones or Gates yet?”

  “Not a damn thing. Jones is holed up somewhere and the best we got on Gates was a statement from the elevator operator in the Proctor Building that he left sometime after ten. He carried no luggage and seemed to be in a hurry. The cleaning woman who took care of his place said everything was still there as far as she knew, but she had the idea he kept a woman somewhere and a change of clothes at her apartment. We’re still looking. Incidentally, the other desk clerk at the Sandelor Hotel handed us a blank. He knew the Howell dame but couldn’t identify Greta. He’s generally half in the bag and can’t see too well anyway. We leaned on him a little but couldn’t cut it at all.”

  “And Dulcie McInnes?”

  “She was on live TV from Washington this afternoon M.C.ing a fashion show for some big women’s organization. She’s a house guest of a woman who’s the wife of one of our biggest lobbyists and couldn’t give us a lead to Gates at all. She suggested that he might have gone off on an independent assignment. Our men didn’t think so because the equipment he would have carried is still at his studio.”

  I leaned back in the chair with my hands folded behind my head. “Not much is being said in the papers about Mitch Temple.”

  “Which is the way we wanted it and they’re cooperating.” On the wall the clock ticked the seconds away. Pat finally said, “The M.E. had replies to his queries about the poison that was used on the Poston girl. It wasn’t as exclusive as he thought it was. There are certain other derivatives from similar sources that have been used by the Orientals for centuries. It went out of fashion when the royalty class was deposed by the rabble, but available. Interpol reported its use several times during some big family vendettas in Turkey.”

  “I’m missing your point,” I said.

  Pat picked up a pencil and doodled on a pad on the desk. “There isn’t any. I’m just throwing it up for grabs.”

  “Sorry, buddy.”

  “We hit a dead end on the whip that killed the Delaney kid.”

  “You still have one more to go. Find out who
owns a rack.”

  Pat shot me an annoyed glance. “Mike ... this could be an individual. A nut. He preys on one type. He uses gimmicks.” He threw the pencil down and slapped the desk with an open hand. “Damn it, I haven’t got the feeling that it is and neither do you.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Damn it, Mike ...”

  “Something’s wrong. Too many things miss being on the line by a fraction. There are people involved who have no right being there at all. Kills like this generally touch only certain persons ... they don’t get spread out all over the map like this one.” I stopped and let the chair ease forward. “No, I don’t think it’s an individual. It’s too well coordinated. If it were an individual somebody would have seen something. If those kills were related there was nothing spontaneous about them.”

  “Get to it, Mike.”

  “Theodore Gates could be the key. He knew three of them. Photos of them were in his files. I saw Greta’s name in his personal index and the next time it wasn’t there at all. He had the time to destroy it. Greta could have called him after I left there to tell him I had located her. A little thought would put his finger on what happened. He took the card out and disappeared.”

  “Why?”

  “And therein lies the rub,” I quoted. “Why? Unless he and Greta had something going for them. Somebody obviously paid off Lorenzo Jones to use Virginia Howell’s room that night. I’ll take her word for it she didn’t know what the scoop was.”

  “We’ll get him.”

  “Sure, but what good will it do? He’s a pimp, a punchy pimp.

  If there’s a hot one here nobody’s going to invite him in on the deal. That type is too likely to blow it to pieces. No, he was used somehow. I can see how a guy like Gates might have had contact with Jones. Gates had outside assignments that could have led to Jones or he just could have been one of the guy’s clients. When you get a file on Gates that stuff will come out. We just can’t wait around, that’s all.”