The Body Lovers Page 12

  Pat got up and stalked to the window, snapping his fingers with impatience. “Mitch Temple puts it all in the same package,” he said. “He spotted the same similarity and followed it up. He recognized somebody and died for it.” He turned around and squinted at me. “Then there was that guy who tried for you. Nothing came of that either. We’re dealing with a cast of nobodies.”

  “But they’re there.”

  “Sure. And we’re here. Three punks are in the can on an assault and battery charge. Great record. You know what the papers will be doing to this office if there’s no action before long?”

  I nodded. “Every reporter in the city is working overtime.”

  “The difference is, friend, that they don’t have to be the goats.”

  “Pat,” I said quietly.

  “Yeah?”

  “What’s out at Bradbury?”

  “Now what hole in your head did that come out of?”

  “It came up along the line,” I said.

  Pat’s smile was a tight thing that barely crinkled his mouth. There was no humor in it at all. Before he could push it I added, “Harry Service mentioned Greta having a letter from there once. He didn’t see it.”

  Some of the frost left his face. “When was this?”

  “Her last visit.”

  Pat went over it in his mind a moment and told me, “It’s a resort area along the coast and a residential area for the wealthy further in. I haven’t been there for five years.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “You pushing an angle?” he demanded.

  “Curious, that’s all.”

  “She could have been there. The place is public beaches, a yacht harbor and motel area now. Some of the Fire Island crowd took it over and ran it down. It’s getting a reputation of being an artists-and-models colony. The old permanent residents complained, but it didn’t help any. I guess they thought it would ruin their image, especially after a couple of the embassies bought into the area there.”

  “What embassies?”

  “Oh, the French have a place there... so do one of the Russian satellite countries. I think one of the Middle East outfits moved out there a couple of years ago too.”

  I laughed with surprise. “And I thought if it didn’t happen in the city here you wouldn’t know about it.”

  “The reason I know is because some of our best officers retired from the force to take up security jobs there at twice the pay.”

  “Not at the embassies?”

  “No, they have their own security. The town has a jazz festival every year that brings in a mob of town wreckers. The public finally anted up for a bigger force before somebody caused an international incident. It’s gotten worse every year. It’s too damn bad Gerald Ute wouldn’t be philanthropic in other fields.”

  “Ute?”

  “Yeah, the one you met the other night.”

  “He’s got a place out there?”

  “Not him. He simply financed the jazz festivals. He turned his place into a communal recreation center for the bigwigs of the U.N. The city runs it, but on a pretty restricted basis. It was a grand gesture and got him a lot of publicity, but it got a white elephant off his hands too ... along with a fat tax deduction.”

  He sat down, swinging idly in his chair, watching my face. “Velda’s out there,” I said.

  “So are a hundred agents from Washington to make sure nothing happens to the housecats from the U.N. These days nobody wants to take a chance of having some politico scratched. Hell, the way diplomatic immunity goes these days we can’t even give out parking tickets.”

  I didn’t want Pat to see my face. He didn’t know it, but he had just been the catalyst that jelled one of those thoughts that had been so damn elusive.

  When I got up I tossed a note on Pat’s desk. “Can you see Harry gets this? It’s a report that his sister is alive.”

  “Okay. You going to press charges against those three we’re holding?”

  “Right now.”

  “You’re going to have a lot to talk about when you’re in court on that kill.”

  chapter 8

  Four of them were in the office when I got there. Al Casey and Hy were at the desk and two old-timers from the morgue file, passing them from one to another, identifying the subjects and making terse comments on their background.

  I threw my coat and hat on a chair, took one of the containers of coffee from the sack and looked over Hy’s shoulder. “What have you got?”

  Hy nudged AL “Tell him about it.”

  He fanned out a dozen pictures in front of him. “Mitch Temple pulled out a lot of folders, but his prints were only on the edges, from where he thumbed through them. However, on the photos in two of the folders his prints were all over them, so he had taken a lot of time going through them.”

  “These?”

  “Yeah. Sixty-eight of them in the ‘General Political’ classification. We have everything from the mayor’s speech to a union parley. We tried the cross indexes and can’t see what ties in. Everybody in the foreground of the shots is identified and so far we have over three hundred names with repeats on about half, all of whom are fairly prominent citizens.”

  “How many did the paper use?”

  “About a third. They’re stamped on the back with the dates.”

  “There’s a common denominator there though, isn’t there?” Hy nodded. “Sure. We nailed that right away. All were taken in New York within the last year. Try to make something out of that.”

  I picked some of the photos from the pile on the end and scanned through them. Some I remembered having seen in the paper, others were parts of the general coverage given the occasions by one or more photographers. There were faces I knew, some I had just heard about and too many that were totally unknown.

  Every so often somebody would spot a possible connection and it would be checked out with another index, but every time they’d draw a blank. There didn’t seem to be any possibility of a connection between their activities and Mitch Temple’s death. Nevertheless, the pictures made repeated rounds among all of us.

  I grinned when I saw Dulcie McInnes at a charity function and another of her at a ball in a Park Avenue hotel dancing with an elderly foreign ambassador in a medal-decorated sash. Then I stopped looking at faces and concentrated on the names typed and pasted to the back of the sheets.

  The only one whose name had come up before was Belar Ris. He was greeting a diplomatic representative from one of the iron curtain countries who was getting off an airplane and Belar Ris had the funny expression of a man who didn’t particularly care about being photographed. He seemed to be tall and blocky, suggestive of physical power even tailor-made clothes couldn’t conceal. His face didn’t show any trace of national origin except that he was swarthy and his eyes had a shrewd cast to them. His out-stretched arm was bared to the cuff of his coat, his wrist and forearm thick. Belar Ris was a short-sleeved-shirt man, the kind who wanted no obstacles in the way of a power move.

  Al saw me concentrating on the photo and asked, “Got something?”

  I tossed the picture down. “Mitch had some column items on this one.”

  He looked at it carefully. “Who didn’t? Belar Ris. He’s a U.N. representative. There’s another picture of him in tonight’s paper raising hell at an Assembly meeting.”

  “Anything special on him?”

  “No, but he’s publicity-shy. There are a dozen like him at the U.N. now ... the grabbers. He’ll play both ends against the middle to keep things going back home. Anything to protect his interests. It’s too bad the idiots appoint people like that to represent them.”

  “They have to.” Al separated some of the shots in front of him and picked one out. “Here’s another of Ris. It was right after that Middle East blow-up. The guy he’s talking to was ousted the next week and killed in a coup.”

  One other person was in the picture, but the lighting didn’t make his features too distinguishable. “Who’s this?”

/>   Al took the picture from me, scanned it and shook his head. “Beats me. Probably in the background. He’s not mentioned on the back.”

  “He looks familiar,” I said.

  “Could be. That’s right outside the U.N. complex and he could be part of a diplomatic corps. It doesn’t look like he’s standing with Ris.”

  He was right The guy wasn’t with Ris or the other one, but it didn’t look as if he were going anywhere either. He seemed to be in an attitude of waiting, but even then, with a stop-action shot, you couldn’t tell. There was something vaguely familiar about him, a face you see once and couldn’t forget because of the circumstances. I ran it through my mind quickly, trying to focus on possible areas of contact, but couldn’t make a connection and put the picture back on the pile.

  I spent another twenty minutes with them, then got up and wandered down the corridor to the morgue where old Biff was reading his paper. He waved and I said, “Mind if I take a look in your files?”

  “Be my guest.”

  I went down the rows until I came to the “R’s” and pulled out the drawer. There was a file on Belar Ris, with three indistinct photos that hadn’t been used. There was the shadow of his hat, a hand apparently carelessly held in front of his face and a blur of motion that didn’t quite make him recognizable. The ones he was with were identified, but I didn’t make any of them. All of them seemed to have some prominence, to judge by their clothes, the attaché cases they carried or the general background. I closed the files and walked back to the desk.

  Hy was standing there looking at me.

  “Okay, Mike,” he said, “you pulled something out.”

  “Belar Ris,” I told him. “There’s nothing in the files.”

  “Why him?”

  “Nothing special. He was the only one I recognized that Mitch wrote about.”

  “Can it, Mike. There is something special. What?”

  “The guy doesn’t seem to like having his picture taken.”

  “A lot of them are that way.”

  “Attached to a diplomatic staff? They’re all publicity hounds.”

  “What do you know about Ris, Mike?”

  “Only what Mitch wrote.”

  “Maybe I can tell you a little more. He’s got a hush-hush background. Black-market activities, arms dealing, tricky business dealings, but I know a lot of others on top of the political situation that were just as bad. Right now he’s being treated mighty carefully because guys like that can sway the balance of power in the U.N. Now look ... there’s something else about Ris, so don’t you tell me ...”

  “There isn’t anything, buddy. I was swinging wild.”

  Biff shoved the paper across the desk before Hy could answer me and said, “This the one you’re talking about?”

  It was Belar Ris on the front page, all right. He was talking to two of our people and a French representative during a break in the session and his face was hard and one finger pointed aggressively at our man who looked pretty damn disgusted. The caption said it was a continuation of the argument over having admitted the government represented by Naku Em Abor, who had just proposed some resolution inimical to the western powers.

  Hy said, “Does that look like a guy who doesn’t want his picture taken?”

  I had to admit that it didn’t.

  Biff grinned and said, “Don’t fool yourself, Hy. Charlie Forbes took that shot and he doesn’t work with a Graflex. Ten to one it was a gimmick camera hidden under his shirt.”

  I tapped Hy on the shoulder. “See what I mean?”

  He handed the paper back. “Okay, Mike. I’ll buy a little piece of it. Well poke around. Now how about the rest of it?”

  “The boys on the police beat have big ears.”

  “When it concerns you, yeah.”

  I gave him the story, on finding Greta Service without mentioning all the details, simply that Dulcie McInnes had suggested checking Teddy Gates’ files and I had come up with another address. He knew he wasn’t getting the whole picture, but figured I was protecting a client’s interest and since the job was done as far as Harry was concerned, it ended there.

  When I left the building it was pretty late, but for what I wanted to do, the night was just starting.

  The stable of girls Lorenzo Jones ran was a tired string operating out of run-down hotels and shoddy apartments. They all had minor arrest records, and after each one, simply changed the locality of their activities, picked up a new name and went back into the business. Like most of the girls who were on the tail end of the prostitution racket, they had no choice. Jones ran things with an iron fist and they didn’t dispute his decisions. The operation was pretty well confined to the section catering to the waterfront trade, the quickies and drunks who patronized the dives where he made the contacts for his broads.

  None of the first three I found had seen him and they seemed to be wandering around in a vacuum, not knowing whether to hit the streets or wait for Jones to arrange their appointments. Two of them had turned repeat tricks for old customers out of habit and one had solicited a couple of customers on her own because she was broke.

  For some reason they were anxious to see Jones show up again, probably because on their own they’d get sluffed off if they tried to hustle, while Jones got the money in advance and the customer took what he was offered whether he liked it or not.

  Talking wasn’t part of their makeup. They had taken too many lumps from Jones and their customers over the years and there was no way to lean on them.

  But the fourth one wasn’t like that. Her name was Roberta Slade and she was the last one Jones had added to his firm. I found her in a place they called Billy’s Cave sipping a martini and studying herself in the mirror over the back bar.

  When I sat down her eyes caught mine in the glass and she said with a voice the gin had thickened just a little bit, “Move to the rear of the bus, mister.”

  She turned insolently and I could see that one time she had been a pretty girL The makeup was heavy, her eyes tired, but there was still some sparkle in her hair and a little bit of determination in the set of her mouth. “Do I know you?”

  I waved for a beer and pushed some money across the bar. “Nope.”

  “Well, I’m taking the day off.” She turned back and twirled the glass in her hand.

  “Good for you,” I said.

  I finished half the beer and put the glass down. “Shove off,” she said softly.

  I took twenty bucks out and laid it down between us. “Will that buy some conversation?”

  A little grin split her lips and she glanced at me, her eyebrows raised. “You don’t look like one of those nuts, mister. I’ve given a hundred different versions of my life history embellished with lurid details to guys who get their kicks that way and I can spot them a city block away.”

  “I’m not paying for that kind of talk.”

  Quickening interest showed in her face. “You a cop? Damn, you look like one, but any more you can’t tell what a cop looks like. The vice squad runs college boys who look like babies; dames you take for schoolteachers turn out to be policewomen. It’s rough.”

  “I’m a private cop, if you want to know.”

  “Oh boy,” she laughed. “Big deal. Whose poor husband is going to get handed divorce papers for grabbing some outside stuff?” She laughed again and shook her head. “I don’t know names, I’m lousy at remembering faces and all your twenty bucks could buy you would be a lot of crap, so beat it.”

  “I want Lorenzo Jones.”

  The glass stopped twirling in her fingers. She studied it a moment, drained it and set it on the bar. “Why?” she asked without looking at me.

  “I want to give him a friendly punch in the mouth.”

  “Somebody already did.”

  “Yeah, I know.” I laid my hand palm down on the bar so she could see the cuts across my knuckles. “I want to do it again,” I said.

  Very slowly, her face turned so she was smiling up at me and her eyes
had the look of a puppy that had found a friend and was trying his best not to run away. “So I have a champion.”

  “Not quite.”

  “But you laid him out, didn’t you? Word gets around fast. You were the one who raised all that hell in Virginia’s room, weren’t you?”

  “I was on a job.”

  Her grin turned into a chuckle and she motioned with a finger for the bartender to fill her glass again. “I wish I could have seen it. That dirty bastard took me apart enough times. He hated my guts, you know that? And do you know why?”

  “No.”

  “I used to work a hatcheck concession in a joint he hung out in. I wasn’t like this then. He tried his best to make me and I brushed him off. He was a pig. You know how he gets his kicks? He ... well, hell, that’s another story.”

  Her drink came and I paid for it. For a few seconds she stirred the olive around with the toothpick absently, then tasted it, her eyes on herself in the back bar mirror. “I almost had it made. I was doing some high-class hustling, then I got a guy who liked me. Nice rich kid. Good education.” She made a sour grimace and said, “Then Jones queered the deal. He got some pictures of me on a date and showed them to the kid. That was the end of that. I went to pieces, but he picked them up fast. He had me worked over a couple of times, picked up by the cops so I had a record, then he moved in and took over when I didn’t have any place to go.” Roberta took a long pull of the martini and added sadly, “I guess this is what I was cut out for anyway.”

  “Where’s Jones now?”

  “I hope the bastard’s dead.”

  “He isn’t.”

  She ran the fingers of one hand through her hair, then lightly down the side of her cheek. “The cops are looking for him too.”

  “I know.”

  “Why?”

  “There are a couple of dead girls he might know something about.”

  “Not Lorenzo Jones. They can’t make any money for him dead. He’d keep them alive.”

  I said, “He’s just a lead. I want him, Roberta.”

  “What will you do to him if you find him?”

  “Probably kick the crap out of him.”