Give the Boys a Great Big Hand
- Автор: Хантер Эван
- Серия: 87th Precinct #11
- Год: 1960
- Язык: английский
- Год: Simon & Schuster
- Жанр: Полицейские детективы
Электронная книга - «Give the Boys a Great Big Hand». Краткое содержание книги:
“Hey!” he yelled after the bus. “You forgot your bag!”
Genera picked up the bag — a small, blue overnight bag issued by an airline. He unzipped the bag and reached into it. Then he gripped the bus-stop sign for support.
The bag held... a severed human hand.
The police lab gave both bag and hand a thorough examination and discovered next to nothing. Steve Carella, Cotton Hawes, Meyer Meyer and the other 87th Precinct detectives had a murderer to find, and they had to begin without even knowing who the victim was.
The Missing Persons Bureau files supplied two leads, both of which led nowhere.
Everything that looked even faintly like a clue was checked and double-checked and they all led to the same place — a dead end.
Then, when the break finally came and several clues turned up at once, they neatly contradicted each other. It was the toughest case the 87th Precinct detectives had ever faced.
“A suitcase, I believe. A large one.”
“Anything else?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Was she carrying a small, blue overnight bag?” Hawes asked.
Tudor thought for a moment. “Yes, I think she was. One of those small bags the airlines give you. Yes, she was.”
“Circle Airlines, Mr. Tudor?”
“I don’t remember. I have the impression it was Pan American.”
Carella nodded and picked up the photographs. The girl Barbara “Bubbles” Cesare did not seem to be thirty-four years old, not from the photographs, at any rate. The pictures showed a clear-eyed, smiling brunette loosely draped in what seemed to be a fisherman’s net. The net did very little to hide the girl’s assets. The girl had assets in abundance. And coupled with these was the provocative look that all strippers wore after they’d ceased to wear anything else. Bubbles Caesar looked out of the photographs with an expression that clearly invited trouble. Studying the photos, Carella was absolutely certain that this was the identical look which Eve had flashed at Adam after taking her midday fruit. The look spelled one thing and one thing alone and, even realizing that the look was an acquired one, a trick of the girl’s trade, Carella studied the photos and found that his palms were getting wet.
“She’s pretty,” he said inadequately.
“The pictures don’t do her justice,” Tudor said. “She has a complexion like a peach and... and a vibration that can only be sensed through knowing her. There are people who vibrate, gentlemen. Barbara is one of them.”
“You said you helped her get settled, Mr. Tudor. What, exactly, did you do?”
“I got a hotel for her, to begin with. Until she found a place of her own. I advanced her some money. I began seeing her regularly. And, of course, I got a job for her.”
“Where?”
“The King and Queen. It’s an excellent club.”
“Where’s that, Mr. Tudor?”
“Downtown, in The Quarter. I’ve placed some very good girls there. Pavan started there when she came here from Frisco. But, of course, Pavan had big-time quality, and I moved her out very fast. She’s working on The Street now. A place called The String of Pearls. Do you know it?”
“It sounds familiar,” Carella said. “Miss Caesar was not big-time in your opinion, is that right?”
“No. Not bad. But not big-time.”
“Despite those... vibrations.”
“The vibrations were a part of her personality. Sometimes they come over on the stage, sometimes they don’t. Believe me, if Barbara could have incorporated this... this inner glow into her act, she’d have been the biggest ever, the biggest. Bar none. Gypsy Rose Lee, Margie Hart, Zorita, Lili St. Cyr, I tell you Barbara would have outshone them all. But no.” He shook his head. “She was a second-rate stripper. Nothing came across the footlights but that magnificent body and, of course, the look that all strippers wear. But not the glow, not the vibrations, not the... the life force, call it what you will. These only came from knowing her. There is a difference, you understand.”
“Was she working at The King and Queen when she disappeared?”
“Yes. She didn’t show up for the show on February twelfth. The owner of the club reported this to me as her agent, and I called her apartment. She was living at the time with two other girls. The one who answered the phone told me that she hadn’t seen her since early that morning. I got alarmed, and I went out to look for her. This is a big city, gentlemen.”
“Yes.”
“The next morning, the thirteenth, I called the police.” Tudor paused. He looked past the detectives and through the window where the rain dripped steadily against the red brick of the Creo Building. “I had bought her a necklace for Valentine’s Day. I was going to give it to her on Valentine’s Day.” He shook his head. “And now she’s gone.”
“What kind of a necklace, Mr. Tudor?”
“A ruby necklace. She has black hair, you know, very black, and deep brown eyes. I thought rubies, I thought the fire of rubies... ” He paused again. “But she’s gone, isn’t she?”
“Who owns The King and Queen, Mr. Tudor?”
“A man named Randy Simms. Randolph is his full name, I believe, but everyone calls him Randy. He runs a very clean establishment. Do you plan to call on him?”
“Yes. Maybe he can give us some help.”
“Find her, would you?” Tudor said. “Oh, God, please find her.”
11
The King and Queen was actually on the outermost fringe of The Quarter, really closer to the brownstone houses that huddled in the side streets off Hall Avenue than to the restaurants, coffeehouses, small theaters, and art shops that were near Canopy Avenue.
The place was a step-down club, its entrance being one step down from the pavement. To the right of the entrance doorway was a window that had been constructed of pieces of colored glass in an attempt to simulate a stained-glass window. The colored panes showed a playing-card portrait of a king on the left, and a playing-card portrait of a queen on the right. The effect was startling, lighted from within so that it seemed as if strong sunlight were playing on the glass. The effect, too, was dignified and surprising. Surprising because one expected something more blatant of a strip joint, the life-sized placards out front featuring an Amazonian doll in the middle of a bump or a grind. There were no placards outside this club. Nor was there a bold display of typography announcing the name of the place. A small, round, gold escutcheon was set off center in the entrance door, and this was the only indication of the club’s name. The address — “12N.” — was engraved onto another round gold plaque set in the lower half of the door.
Hawes and Carella opened the door and walked in.
The club had that same slightly tired, unused look that most nightclubs had during the daytime. The look was always startling to Carella. It was as if one suddenly came across a middle-aged woman dressed in black satin and wearing diamonds at 10:00 in the morning in Schrafft’s. The King and Queen looked similarly overdressed and weary during the daylight hours, and perhaps more lonely. There wasn’t a sign of life in the place.
“Hello!” Carella called. “Anybody home?”
His voice echoed into the long room. A window at the far end admitted a single gray shaft of rain-dimmed light. Dust motes slid down the shaft of light, settled silently on the bottoms of deserted chairs stacked on round tables.
“Hello?” he called again.
“Empty,” Hawes said.
“Looks that way. Anybody here?” Carella yelled again.
“Who is it?” a voice answered. “We don’t open until six P.M.”
“Where are you?” Carella shouted to the voice.
“In the kitchen. We’re closed.”
“Come on out here a minute, will you?”
A man appeared suddenly in the gloom, wiping his hands on a dish towel. He stepped briefly into the narrow shaft of light and then walked to where the two detectives were standing.
“We’re closed,” he said.
“We’re cops,” Carella answered.
“We’re still closed. Especially to cops. If I served you, I’d get my liquor license yanked.”
“You Randy Simms?” Hawes asked.
“That’s me,” Simms said. “Why? What’d I do?”
“Nothing. Can we sit down and talk someplace?”
“Anyplace,” Simms said. “Choose your table.”
They pulled chairs off one of the tables and sat. Simms was a sandy-haired man in his late forties, wearing a white dress shirt open at the throat, the sleeves rolled up. There was a faintly bored expression on his handsome face. He looked like a man who spent his summers at St. Tropez at home among the girls in the bikinis, his winters at St. Moritz skiing without safety bindings. Carella was willing to bet he owned a Mercedes-Benz and a collection of Oriental jade.