The Body Lovers Read online

  “New money?” I asked him.

  He got the point. “If he had any more, we didn’t find it. I’d figure that if you were the target for a contract kill it would go higher than what he was showing and the gun hand would have had a little more class. That’s why I’m still letting your story stand, old buddy.”

  I grinned at him and hoisted the beer. “He was an army type and that pistol he carried wasn’t a zip gun.”

  “Hell, I figured that, but who isn’t ex-military any more? And with his background you could expect him to tote a little hardware. It isn’t that hard to come by.” He paused and put down his sandwich. “Incidentally, we found some burglar tools and some goodies lifted in a previous robbery in his room.”

  I kept my face straight and nodded. Pat was really scrambling it now. He was throwing the possibility that the guy really had tried to knock off my office for something of monetary value instead of having either Velda or me as a primary target and all I did was add to the picture by phonying the other break-ins.

  “And now the case is closed,” I said.

  Pat washed his last bite down and shoved the glass back. His eyes went over my face and the lines that played with the comers of his mouth weren’t a smile. “Is it?” he asked me.

  When a few seconds went by, I said, “Don’t nudge me, Pat.”

  “Last night we exhumed a body. It was that of a young girl supposedly killed in a car crash about four months ago. She was burned beyond recognition, but we got a make from a routine inquiry on her dental work a month later. The lab reports said she was loaded to the gills, and that quite literally. Anybody with the alcohol content she had shouldn’t have been able to drive at all. However, making exceptions for certain tolerances people show, we had to assume that’s what caused it. She was known as a heavy drinker and a wild kid who could really hold the stuff. She was last seen alive in a slop chute in the Village and said she was going on a party somewhere without saying anything more. The ones she was with were well alibied and told us it was nothing new. She took off in her car and what happened wasn’t totally unexpected.”

  “Then what’s your angle, Pat?”

  “A more detailed autopsy showed injuries not normally sustained in a car crash, even one of that magnitude. Even the heat couldn’t account for certain aspects of her condition.”

  “You’re not saying much, kiddo.”

  “Ever hear of the rack?”

  “Come off it, Pat!”

  “Nasty thought,” he said, “but look at this.” He held out a photo and let me look at it. It was a reduced studio picture of a lovely, well-built girl in her middle twenties, swathed in a sheer, Grecian-style dress, posed languidly against an artificial column, a seductive expression in her dark eyes and the trace of a smile creasing her mouth.

  “What about her?”

  “Registered with the police department as a night-club entertainer. Good appearance, but a lousy voice so she didn’t make out. Her agent couldn’t sell her except as a hostess in a few joints and said she picked up money from the johns in the places she worked and seemed to do all right. Orphaned at sixteen with a crippled brother in Des Moines who drew a full World War Two disability pension and ran a moderately prosperous market on the side. He sent the money to bury her.”

  He gave me another long, steady look. “Tie in the others and what do you have?”

  “Somebody loves nice bodies,” I said.

  “There’s one other thing.”

  “So?”

  “This one knew Greta Service,” Pat said. “They both worked for the same two outfits in the garment district at the same time, modeling identical lines. Phil Silvester photographed them together for their brochure.”

  “Got a pick-up out on her?”

  “In five states.” He paused and glanced at me out of the corners of his eyes. “We covered some of your ground but didn’t get too much cooperation. How did you make out?”

  “No better.”

  “Harry Service wouldn’t talk, either.”

  “Put him in jail,” I said.

  “Quit trying to be funny, Mike. He mentioned a letter to you without giving the postmark. The tape was clear at that point.”

  “He didn’t say,” I told him.

  “Withholding evidence isn’t a petty matter, chum.”

  “Evidence of what? All I have is privileged information. I’m working for Harry, remember?”

  “Balls.” Pat’s face grew tight. “I’m not going to play you down, Mike. Right now I want an opinion. Do you think there’s any tie-in between these women?”

  I waved to Ed to bring me another beer and finished half of it before I answered him. “Look, Pat ... we have three kids in allied professions. It’s possible they all knew each other. It’s a damn tight business so it’s likely they ran into each other. Let’s assume they did. Two are dead and one is missing.”

  “You forgot the fourth one.”

  “For the moment that’s pure speculation. Check your statistics and you’ll see how many die every hour.”

  “Think maybe Greta Service is dead?”

  “No. A friend of hers saw her alive and not too far from here not long ago.”

  “Mike, they were show kids, no family ties and not in the big time. Any of them would hustle for a buck.”

  “And you and I know plenty like that. You’re angling for the Jack-the-Ripper bit, aren’t you?”

  “It’s possible. There’s a curious part to it. None of those girls were sexually molested prior to their deaths.”

  “If it’s one man he’s got a damn good operation going. Just tell me this ... and it’s your thought... why go so far out for a remote poison to knock off the Poston girl? How would he have access to the stuff if it’s that scarce? It doesn’t fit the pattern.”

  “But there’s a pattern,” Pat insisted.

  “Sure, if you look at it like that.”

  Pat swung around and looked straight at me. “Which brings us straight back to you, friend.”

  “Now you’re sweating me.”

  “Nope. That’ll come later, old pal. Right now I’m just wondering about one thing. That business with Orslo Bucher. Did it happen the way you said it did?”

  “Funny, Hy asked me the same thing.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Does Macy’s tell Gimbel’s?”

  Pat threw his half of the lunch money on the bar top. “Don’t get too deep, Mike. You don’t go solo in this world very long. We’ve played a lot of games together. Let’s not quit here. I know how you think, so I’m going along with you for now, but remember that upstairs, people are after your neck. If you fall, I can too, so stay loose.”

  “I’m so loose I jingle.”

  “Just one more time. For me. And off the record. The bit with Bucher ... did it happen like that?”

  I shook my head. “Nope.”

  “You know what you are, don’t you?”

  “I’ve been told often enough,” I said.

  Orslo Bucher’s neighborhood wasn’t new to me. It lay in the fringe area adjoining a slum section that was marked for urban renewal when they could figure out where to put the people that were already there. You could feel the depression that hung over the buildings like an emotional smog, see it in the gray wash that dangled from the clotheslines between the buildings and in the restless hostility of the inhabitants. It was a place that existed on the gratuity of the city’s Welfare Department, but the bars were filled and the curbs lined with an assortment of misused cars.

  Two years ago we had mopped up a bunch who had peddled home-made booze that had killed off fifteen people at a party, and there would still be some around who liked the feel of the cash I had laid out to get a line on the slobs. The police would get a few reluctant facts, a squeeze on their informers might get them a little more, but when they saw the long green and knew I wasn’t submitting official reports they’d lay it out for me.

  Max Hughes was the night bartender a
t the Seville, a grungy corner slop chute. He had just come on the shift when I walked in, mopped the bar top down with a dirty rag and gave me the barest glance of recognition. Without being asked, he slid a beer in front of me and changed the twenty I put down.

  “Orslo Bucher,” I said. I tapped the ten-spot on the counter and watched it disappear under his fingers.

  He leaned forward, propping his elbows on the mahogany. “You the one who bumped him?”

  I nodded.

  “Thought it was you. Hell, he was asking for it.”

  “Why?”

  “Petty crap. He was always pulling something.”

  “Alone?”

  “Strictly,” Max said. “Nobody much wanted him around anyway. Kind of a mean one. I tossed him out a couple of times when he was loaded and he looked like he wanted to kill me.”

  “He make any trouble around here?”

  “No ... but I’d lay odds he was the one pulled that armed stickup on Arnie’s liquor store last month. I felt that iron he carried when I heaved him out.”

  “Who’d know about him, Max?”

  “Like I said ... nobody. He was either in his pad, one of the joints or gone. Nobody cared.” Max squinted and rubbed his chin. “Funny thing though, once I seen him getting into a big new car over on Lenox Avenue. He got in the back and the car had a chauffeur. I didn’t see who he was with, except the guy wore a homburg and seemed to know him. It wasn’t the kind of company Bucher usually kept.”

  “Sure it was him?”

  “Positive.” He frowned again and tapped the back of my hand with his finger. “Come to think of it, old Greenie said he seen the same thing once. I didn’t believe him because Greenie’s bombed out on booze and can’t think straight. He kept telling me it was a dipple car, whatever the hell that is, but he’s always got a screwy name for everything.”

  “Suppose I talk to Greenie.”

  Max grunted and said, “You’ll have to go six feet down to do it. He got clipped by a truck two months ago and died in Bellevue.”

  I was getting nowhere in a hurry. When Max couldn’t supply any answers there weren’t any to be had. I said, “What about that whore Bucher used?”

  “Rosie? Man, that one’s on the last time around. She’ll bang for a beer or a buck and lucky to get either. The only ones she gets is the bums the other hustlers won’t touch. Lucy Digs and Dolly gave Bucher the brush when he tried to warm their pads, that’s why he wound up with Rosie, and when them two turn anything down, it got to be pretty sad. Nope, old Bucher wasn’t too popular around here. He ain’t going to be missed none at all. Not none. If it wasn’t for the cops nosing around nobody would have given him a thought.”

  “Okay, kid, if that’s the best you can do.”

  “Sorry, Mike. That’s the way it is. Suppose something turns up?”

  I took out a card and wrote the name of the hotel on it. “Call me here if you think it’s important.” He looked up at me with shrewd eyes. “I’ll mail you a check,” I said.

  Hy was just getting ready to leave his office when I reached him. He had been trying to get me for the past hour and was about to give up. Too many people were around for him to talk, so he told me to meet him at Teddy’s place as fast as I could. I walked up a block, grabbed a cab and gave him the address of the restaurant in the lower end of Manhattan.

  He was waiting for me in a private section and he wasn’t alone. He pointed to a seat and indicated the tall lanky guy next to him. “You know A1 Casey?”

  “I’ve seen you around.” I held out my hand and he took it. “Biff told me about you going over the morgue files. Come up with anything?”

  “That’s what we wanted to talk to you about,” Hy said. “Sit down.”

  I pulled out a chair and he nodded to AL “Fill him in.”

  Al eased back in his chair and had a sip of his coffee. “First, we think we found Mitch Temple’s last contact. He was in a woman’s clothing shop on Broadway asking about those damn negligees and finally bought one. He had given his name and the office address to the salesgirl and laid down twenty bucks for a twelve-dollar item. The girl left to ring up the sale and when she came back he was gone. Now on Broadway, people don’t just leave tips like that, so the girl remembered the incident after a little bit of persuasion. She hadn’t mentioned it before because she didn’t want the manager to know she had taken any cash on the side. The second thing she remembered was that while she was writing up the sales slip, Mitch kept looking at another customer down further in the store who was poking around a clothes rack and was preoccupied enough so that she had to ask him twice about the address before he gave it to her. She never saw either one again.”

  “What did Mitch buy?”

  “A black nylon shortie outfit. Real sexy, she said. What we figure is, he recognized the other guy and followed him out. The date on the sales slip tallies with the day he first started to go through the morgue files.”

  “Anybody else recognize the other one?”

  “No. There was one new girl who might have waited on him, but apparently he didn’t buy anything. If it was the one she thought she remembered, it was just a man who asked if that were all the colors they had in stock. She said that was it and he left. What was peculiar about it ... there was a complete color assortment of new stock that had just been put out that morning.”

  I looked at the two of them and felt my mind fingering out the bits and pieces until there was only one little piece left.

  “Complete except for one,” I said.

  Al Casey shook his head. “Every color. I even checked their stock records.”

  “Not white,” I told him.

  Both of them looked at each other and a frown began to form between Al’s eyes. “That’s right,” he said. “There wasn’t any white. But how would you know?”

  “Mitch Temple told me. That’s why he was reaching for that white handkerchief in his pocket. Not for anything else he had.”

  Hy shoved his glasses up on his forehead and stared at me hard. “I don’t get it, Mike.”

  “Velda spotted it first,” I told him. “Green for redheads, black for blondes. What color dame would look best in white?”

  After a moment Hy said, “A brunette or black-haired doll.” “Like Greta Service,” I added.

  chapter 6

  There was a pattern coming out now. All it took was for that first piece to fall in place. Pat might have put his finger on it after all. Police records were spotted with psycho types who would go to any extremes to satisfy their own strange desires. They could be as devious as a snake and harder to track down. They could weave their own schemes into such fantastically intricate designs that there seemed to be no beginning nor end of the confusion. It wasn’t so much a pattern as a suggestion of one, but it was there.

  I said, “How much of this has Pat got?”

  “His own squad made the same rounds. If they got different answers that’s their tough luck.”

  “How long do you expect to sit on it?”

  “Until we get one step further,” Al told me. “Norm Harrison got back from Washington today where he was covering the latest Senate subcommittee investigations. He was going to go through all his papers to see if Mitch dropped a note to him after he couldn’t reach him by phone. There was a mail chute in Mitch’s apartment house, so it’s a possibility.”

  Hy lit his cigar and blew the match out through a cloud of smoke. “I’m going to see him tonight. He’s covering a political bash one of the U.N. members is giving for a newly admitted country. One of those splinter groups from Africa we’re supporting. You want to go along?”

  “Why me?”

  “Because you’re in this as deep as we are and damn well know it. We’re not passing up any chance of missing an angle on Mitch’s death even if we have to play along with you.”

  “Thanks, pal,” I grinned. I looked at Al Casey. “And you?”

  “Back to those files. I think I know the system Mitch used in go
ing through them. It wasn’t alphabetical. If I can find the last folder he hit we’ll narrow it down pretty well. Even if something’s missing, we can check it against the negative files.”

  I pushed back from the table and got up. “Okay, buddy, I’m with you.”

  The town house of Gerald Ute was a newly restored three-story building just off Fifth Avenue opposite Central Park. My own knowledge of Ute came from sketchy newspaper accounts and on the way over Hy briefed me on his background. He owned several flourishing corporations that had expanded into the multimillion-dollar class since 1950, but he himself hadn’t erupted onto the social scene until his wife decided Chicago was too restrictive for their new position and coerced him into a move to New York. She lasted a year before she made him a widower, but Ute had gotten to enjoy the high life of society circles he could afford and he widened his activities so that he was everything from patron of obscure arts to unofficial host to visiting dignitaries.

  Apparently Ute was smart enough to stay out of the political jungle, though on several occasions his influence was used to mollify ruffled feathers among the U.N. members he cultivated. His activities didn’t seem to interfere with his businesses, which were still climbing on the big board in the Stock Exchange, and at sixty-two, he was pretty well out of the scandal class.

  The muted sounds of a string quartet floated through the rooms against the background of quiet murmuring. A butler took our hats and behind him the guests were gathering in small groups, waiters circulating with trays of champagne glasses. There was little formality. Most of the men were in business suits, a few in black ties, while the women fed their vanities in Paris originals winking with diamonds.

  Gerald Ute knew the value of good public relations. I saw Richie Salisbury who usually covered the Washington beat, Paul Gregory whose “Political Observations” were featured in a national magazine and Jean Singleton who usually handled the foreign news coverage. Ute was talking to Norman Harrison when we walked in, stopped long enough to come over and say hello to Hy and be introduced to me.