The Body Lovers Read online

  For all of his years, he was still ruggedly handsome, though starting to bulge out at the middle. He had the sharp eyes of the shrewd speculator that could laugh at locker-room jokes or cut ice if they had to. When they focused on mine they were reading me like a computer being programmed and he said, “Mr. Hammer. Yes, you’ve made some headlines recently.”

  “Accidentally,” I said.

  “But good for business.” He dropped my hand and smiled.

  “Sometimes.”

  “It’s too bad I can’t write half the things I know about him,” Hy put in.

  “Why don’t you?”

  Hy let out a laugh. “Because Mike might decide to write a biography and I’d be in it. How’s the party going?”

  “Fine, fine. It’s just a welcoming thing for Naku Em Abor and his party ... getting him acquainted with the city and all that. People will be drifting in and out all evening. Suppose I introduce you around.”

  Hy waved him off. “Don’t bother. I know everybody anyway. If I don’t, I will.”

  “And you, Mr. Hammer?”

  Before I could answer Hy said, “Don’t worry about him, Gerald. You never know who this guy is buddies with.”

  “Then let me introduce you to our hostess for the evening.” He walked between us to the nearest couple, a woman in a black strapless gown that flowed over her body like a silvery fluid who was talking to a small oriental in a tuxedo. He said, “My dear

  ... if you have a moment...”

  She turned around, her hair still glinting like a halo, eyes twinkling and touched so that they seemed to turn up at the comers, and when they looked at me, widened with pleasure and Dulcie McInnes said, “Why, Mike, how nice to see you here!”

  Hy nudged Gerald Ute with his elbow and whispered, “See what I mean?”

  Our host laughed, presented James Lusong, talked for a few moments, then the three of them went back to the others, leaving me with Dulcie and a glass of champagne.

  “From fashion editor to hostess,” I said.

  “Our advertisers appreciate the association.” She took my arm and steered me through the crowd, nodding to friends and occasionally introducing me. I saw Hy to one side speaking quietly to Norm Harrison, but couldn’t overhear what they were saying. “It adds class to our publications,” Dulcie told me.

  “It won’t if you’re seen with me,” I said.

  “Ah, but you add excitement. Society girl on safari with white hunter.”

  “That doesn’t make for healthy relationships.”

  Her fingers squeezed my arm and she grinned up at me. “No, but interesting ones. After you left the office there were all sorts of speculation going on. I rather thought our employees read only the more gentle periodicals, then I find they like sensationalism too. You seem to have supplied it for them. A few discreet questions and I learned a lot about you.”

  “I’m surprised you’ll still speak to me, Miss McInnes.”

  “You know women better than that,” she said. “And the name is Dulcie. Now ... satisfy my curiosity.... Since you weren’t on the guest list, how did you make it here?”

  “Power of the press. Friend Hy Gardner was invited and dragged me along. Not that I’m much on these bashes, but we have an appointment later.”

  “Any friend of the press is a friend of Gerald’s. I’m glad you made it. Anyone here you’d like to meet?”

  In four different spots around the room, men were clustered in a tight circle, laughing occasionally, talking with that odd intensity they developed when the nucleus of the circle was a pretty woman. “Maybe the Proctor Girls,” I suggested.

  Dulcie poked me with her finger. “Uh-uh. They’re just eyewash. Besides, they’re too young for you.”

  “How about them?” I indicated the men around the girls.

  Not one of them would ever see fifty again.

  She looked at them and laughed lightly. “Funny, isn’t it? When the Assembly is in session they’re at each other’s throats or thinking up some scheme to transform the world. Now here they are simpering at twenty-year-olds like schoolboys. There’s nothing like a pretty face to keep peace and quiet at a party.”

  “You ought to try it at the U.N. Maybe that’s what they need.”

  “Oh, I’ve given it a thought. Gerald didn’t exactly favor the idea the first time, but the Proctor Girls were such an asset he insists we invite them. Actually, it was his wife’s idea originally.”

  “How did you get involved with being his hostess?”

  “I’m a social climber, or haven’t you heard?”

  “Rumors,” I admitted. “I’m not a member of the set myself.”

  “Fact is, I was born to this sort of thing. My family was Midwestern blue book and all that, I attended the right schools and made the proper friends, so that all of this comes naturally. I rather enjoy it.” She sipped her champagne thoughtfully and said, “Every one of those Proctor Girls you see are from important families. One is engaged to a junior congressman, one to the son of a wealthy industrialist and the other two are being signed by a Hollywood studio.”

  “Lucky.”

  “No ... they work for it. The qualifications for a Proctor Girl are quite rigorous. If they weren’t, we couldn’t afford to have them here.” She put her empty glass on the tray of a passing waiter and took another. “By the way ... have you found the girl you were looking for?”

  “Not yet. It’s a big city and it’s easy to get buried in it. I’m giving it a little more time.”

  “Did the photographs help at all?”

  I shrugged and shook my head. “Nobody’s seen her. But you don’t forget a face like that.”

  Dulcie turned and cocked her head, her eyes thoughtful. “You know, I’m wondering....”

  “What?”

  “Teddy Gates ... the one who photographed the girl you wanted. He has contracts independent of ours and sometimes uses models we turn down. It could be possible he kept a listing on her. He’s done it before.”

  I could feel my neck muscles tighten with the thought of the possibility. “How can I reach him?”

  “You won’t have to. He keeps an office in our building and I have the keys.” She looked at her watch and said, “It’s eight now. We’ll be breaking up here about midnight. Are you intending to stay?”

  “No.”

  “Then suppose you meet me in the lobby of my building ... say at twelve-thirty. We’ll take a look.”

  “You don’t mind?”

  “Uh-uh. I like white hunters. Now let me go play hostess. Have fun.”

  I watched her walk away, appreciating the patrician stride that was so full of purpose, yet so totally feminine. Other eyes caught her as she passed, and watched regretfully when she was out of sight.

  Norm Harrison hadn’t found any communication from Mitch Temple. He had gone through his files and his notes without seeing even an interoffice memo. The kid who did his desk work said he remembered Mitch trying to contact him, but his conversation was hurried and the main point was for Norm to call him back when he came in. The kid didn’t remember anything else.

  We were all together in the library trying to figure out Mitch’s reason for the call, but Norm couldn’t put his finger on it and all he could speculate on was the one time they had been together at a party was when Mitch queried him about the political repercussions of his series on the Mafia. Since then Norm had been assigned to cover the general political situations in the U.N. and the forthcoming elections in the States, neither of which touched Mitch’s area of operation.

  One of the maids came in, told Hy he was wanted on the phone and we waited while he took the call. When he came back he had a look of excitement on his face, waited until we were alone and said, “Al Casey located the cabbie he thinks picked up Mitch. He had him follow another cab and passenger to a store on Twenty-first Street. They waited outside for about fifteen minutes, then this man came out with a package under his arm, walked to the end of the block and got into a pr
ivate car he apparently had called for. They tailed him out to the Belt Parkway, but the other car was going like hell and when the cabbie tried to keep it in sight, he got stopped by a police cruiser and picked up a ticket. Mitch had the guy drive him back uptown and got out near his apartment.”

  “He was sure it was Mitch?”

  “The cabbie identified his photo. What made him remember was that Mitch tipped him enough to pay for the ticket.”

  “But no I.D. on the other car?” I asked.

  “They never got close enough. It was getting dark, traffic was heavy and he said it was either a dark blue or black sedan. He didn’t remember the make.”

  “How about the store?”

  “None of the clerks were specific about the customers, but one did sell a white negligee that day. Al checked the sales slips. It was a cash purchase with no name or address.”

  I looked at Hy thoughtfully. Something was bugging me and I couldn’t reach out and touch it. I said; “Pat better have this now.”

  “He’s already got it,” Hy said. “But what good’s it going to do if we don’t know who the hell we’re looking for?”

  “Mitch recognized him.”

  “And Mitch knew a hell of a lot of people.”

  “But why him?” I insisted. “What would make one guy stand out of a crowd buying sexy clothes for his doll?”

  Norman said quietly, “Maybe he’s done it before ... been messed up in this sort of thing.”

  “We can find out,” Hy told us. “Pat will be checking the M.O.’s and we can give him a hand. Want to come, Mike?”

  “No, you go ahead. I’m going to try a different direction. I’ll call you later.”

  Hy had that puzzled look back on his face again. “Look, Mike ...”

  “It’s only an idea,” I interrupted him. “We have to play this from all sides.”

  Gerald Ute seemed sorry to see us go, but wasn’t insistent on our staying. We said good-by to a few of the others and Dulcie McInnes came over to walk us to the door. I told her something had come up I wanted to check on, but would see her at the Proctor Building as we planned.

  Outside, Hy had flagged a cab, dropped me off opposite the News Building without asking any questions and went downtown. There was a small bar close by that the newspaper fraternity kept filled between shifts. Tim Riley was on his usual stool with his usual martini in his usual endless discussion of the New York Mets with the bartender. He was an old sports reporter assigned to the rewrite desk now, but he couldn’t get baseball out of his system.

  He gave me a big grin when I sat down next to him, but I didn’t let him get started on the Mets. I said, “Favor time, Tim.”

  “Mike, I haven’t got a ticket left. I...”

  “Not that. It’s about Mitch Temple.”

  He put his glass down, his face serious. “Anything. Just ask.”

  “Did he save carbons of his columns?”

  Tim grimaced with his mouth and nodded. “Sure, they all do in case they need a reference later.”

  “I want to see them.”

  “You can go through back issues and ...”

  “That’ll take too long. I’d sooner see his carbons.”

  He finished his drink with one swallow, pushed a bill across the bar and got off the stool. “Come on,” he said.

  Mitch Temple’s cubicle of an office had the stale smell of disuse. An old raincoat still dangled from the hook behind the door and the ashtray was filled with snubbed butts. Somebody had gone through his drawers and left his papers stacked on his desk. Two three-drawer filing cabinets stood side by side, a couple of the drawers only partially closed, but since they only contained his original typewritten carbons stapled to their printed counterparts, there had been no thorough examination. Each folder contained his turnout for the month and they were dated back to two years ago. Some of the folders had cards clipped to their fronts cross-indexing Broadway items, rumors turning into fact, things of interest concerning personalities to be elaborated on later. I snagged the swivel chair with my toe, pulled it up in front of the files and sat down.

  “Something I can help you with?” Tim asked me.

  “I don’t know what I’m looking for myself.”

  “Well, take your time. Nobody’s going to bother you in here. And Mike ... if you find anything, you yell, hear?”

  “Don’t worry, Tim. And thanks.”

  Mitch Temple had been more than an ordinary Broadway gossip columnist. Here and there little gems appeared that I remembered turning into cold, hard news stories later on. He had roved from one end of town to the other, Broadway his theme, but branching off into sidelines that turned him into a part-time crusader when he got hold of something. His series on the Mafia caused a full investigation of their activities with several convictions. Twice he got on politics and made a few faces red around town.

  Dulcie McInnes and Gerald Ute appeared here and there when they either hosted a party or were guests at one. Some of Dulcie’s escorts at society soirees were international figures in politics or finance. She was top-echelon jet set, traveling all over the world for the Proctor Group. Although Mitch reported her as being at different affairs of state and involved with pleasantries accorded the United Nations delegates, she didn’t seem to show any political persuasion or be attached to anyone in particular.

  Gerald Ute came in for a little closer coverage. He was always financing some far-out project or sounding off on things from scouting to the foreign problems. Twice, there was a romantic link to some prominent matron, but nothing came of it. In one column Mitch hinted that he had used his influence with the delegate of the deposed dictator of a South African nation to nail a fat mineral-rights contract for one of his companies, but in today’s business arrangements, that’s par for the course.

  There were other names I recognized and others I didn’t. For three consecutive weeks Mitch hammered at the hypocrisy of the United Nations regarding their commitments, naming Belar Ris, who had come out of obscurity after World War Two with a fortune behind him and had led an uprising that turned his country’s colony into an independent nation that elected him their U.N. delegate. He was trying to force an acceptance of the part-Arabian complex headed by Naku Em Abor. Well, Mitch lost that one, I thought. The country was in and old Naku was being feted at Gerald Ute’s party right now. Mitch tried a lot, but he didn’t win them all. Despite his personal investigation and reporting of facts, two labor unions kept top hoods in office, an outlaw strike damn near destroyed the city and a leading politician was re-elected even though he had a close affiliation with the Communist Party.

  I had another ten minutes before I had to leave, so I took out the last of the folders in the drawer. They made interesting reading, but weren’t at all informative. Belar Ris’s name came up again, once when he got flattened by some playboy in a gin mill and once when the Italian government accused him of being associated with a group marketing black-market medicines for huge profits. There were a few other hot squibs about show-business personalities and some minor jabs at the present administration that weren’t unusual.

  About a third of Mitch’s columns had been covered, and as far as I was concerned, it had been a waste of time. It had taken more than what he had written to cause him to be killed. Anybody with any common sense wouldn’t want to tackle the entire newspaper staff and the police. And right there was the rub again. Supposing it wasn’t someone with common sense ... just a plain psychopath?

  At twelve-twenty-five I was in the lobby of the Proctor Group Building getting a nervous look from a night watchman. Five minutes later Dulcie came in with a wave to both of us and he looked relieved to see her. Someplace she had changed to a skirt and sweater with a short coat thrown over her shoulders and she looked like a teen-ager out on a late date.

  “Been here long?”

  “Five minutes. Good party?”

  “A social success. You left early or you would have met the great heads of great nations.”

/>   I said one word under my breath and she suppressed a giggle, her eyes laughing at me.

  She had the key to a private elevator that whisked us up to the tenth floor, the area reserved for the photographers. She found the switch, threw the lights on and led me down the corridor past the vast film-developing and processing laboratory, the stages where the models were posed against exotic backdrops, down to the offices where we found the one labeled Theodore Gates.

  “Here we are.” She pushed the door open and stepped inside, turned the button on the desk lamp and walked to the cabinets along the wall. “Service, wasn’t it?”

  I nodded. “Greta Service.”

  She slid the drawer out, thumbed through a few envelopes and drew out one with Greta’s name typed across the top. Inside were duplicate photos of the ones in the master file and a resume of Greta’s experience. The address was the one in Greenwich Village.

  “No good,” I said. “We’ll need a later address.”

  She stuffed the folder back and shut the drawer. “Wait a minute.” There was a rotary card file on Gates’ desk and she flipped it around, stopped and said, “Could this be it?”

  I looked at it. The notation listed her name, the Village number with a line drawn through it and another at the Sandelor Hotel, a fourth-rate fleabag on Eighth Avenue. A series of symbols at the bottom of the card may have been significant to Gates but didn’t mean anything to me. In the bottom comer was another name, Howell.

  “Well?”

  “It’s the only lead I got. I’m going to follow it up.”

  “Perhaps you could call first and...”

  “No ... I don’t want to spook her off.” I laid my hand over hers. “Thanks, kitten. I appreciate this.”

  There was a sad little expression in her eyes. “Would it be too much to ask... well, you do have me curious... can I go with you?”

  I took her arm. “Sure, why not?”

  We got out of the cab at the Sandelor Hotel and went into the lobby. It was a place for transients and permanent guests too impoverished or old to go any further. A musty smell of stale smoke and hidden decay hung in the air where it had been gathering for decades. The carpet was threadbare in front of the sagging cracked leather chairs, and in line to the desk and staircase. Drooping potted palms were spotted in the comers, two in front of the elevator that had an OUT OF ORDER sign on it.