The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK™: 23 Classic Mystery Stories
- Автор: Деминг Ричард
- Год: 2016
- Язык: английский
- Год: Wildside Press
- ISBN: 9781479423507
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK™: 23 Classic Mystery Stories». Краткое содержание книги:
“Buy you a drink?”
With the same slight smile she had thrown to me in the mirror she indicated the still nearly full highball before her. Running out of conversational subjects, I lapsed into silence.
“We can talk, though,” the girl said. “I’m not a bad listener. Why so down in the mouth? Fight with your wife?”
I shook my head. “I don’t own one. It’s nothing specific. I guess I’m usually down in the mouth.”
“Business troubles?”
I considered. “Maybe you could call it that. Not financial troubles. I’m a cop. Every once in a while I get disgusted with humanity and more disgusted with myself.”
She looked up at me interestedly. “A policeman? I might have guessed that.”
When I raised an eyebrow inquiringly, she said, “You look so strong. And you seem to have that quiet air of authority policemen are supposed to have.”
The girl actually sounded like she admired me, I thought with mild surprise. For a moment I felt a tug of suspicion, but when I studied her guileless face it died away and was replaced by an unaccustomed feeling of expansiveness. I have never been much of a ladies’ man, and it gave me a strangely pleasant feeling to find I could impress a woman as beautiful as this one.
She was no casual barfly, throwing out a line to the first man she encountered in an attempt to make a pickup, I decided. With her looks and her obviously expensive dress, she could get all the men she wanted without cruising the bars. I decided she must be a guest at the hotel, and was merely being friendly.
Noticing her glass was now nearly empty, I asked, “Can I buy you a drink now?”
“All right,” she said agreeably.
Her name was Jacqueline Crosby, she told me over the drink, and she was a dress designer from Chicago. She was in town for two weeks as her company’s representative at the national fashion show. In return I informed her my name was Sam Card and I was a sergeant on the St. Louis morality squad.
By two highballs later we were old friends. Usually alcohol only succeeds in making me more morose, but to my surprise I found that drinking with Jacqueline was making me increasingly cheerful. By eleven o’clock, when she suggested that she had better get to bed because she had to rise early, I was behaving as light-heartedly as though I were my moon-faced partner, Jud Harrison, instead of the morality squad’s eternal sourpuss.
“I live right here at the hotel,” she added. “If you want to take me up to my room, I’ll mix you a nightcap in return for the drinks you bought me.”
Her tone conveyed the barest suggestion of promise that the invitation could mean more than a nightcap. Momentarily it brought my feet back to earth as I again wondered what motive so beautiful a woman could have in scraping acquaintance with a mere cop. Then I decided that questioning motives was probably one of the reasons I had missed many of the pleasures in life, and rose to follow her without a care in the world.
Jacqueline had a suite, not just a room, I discovered when she keyed open her door and I followed her into a large sitting room. She left me there while she went on into the bedroom, and I could hear her phoning down for ice.
Then she called, “Get the door when the boy brings ice, will you, Sam? I want to change into something more comfortable.”
That did it. Up till then my opinion of Jacqueline had been swaying back and forth between regarding her merely as an impersonally friendly female and a woman on the make. But the corny line about getting into something more comfortable crystallized it. I was now suddenly sure that from the moment she sat down on the bar stool next to me, she had intended me to bring her to her suite and make love to her.
With a mixture of mounting anticipation and puzzlement I wondered if after a lifetime of being ignored by women, I had suddenly become irresistible. Walking over to a wall mirror, I studied my lace again, but it didn’t look any more like the answer to a maiden’s prayers than it had in the bar mirror downstairs.
A knock came at the door, I opened it and traded the white-coated boy in the hall a quarter for a bowl of ice. I had barely closed the door behind him when Jacqueline came from the bedroom.
More comfortable, she had said, and she had changed into about as comfortable a garment as you can imagine short of bare skin. She wore a lace negligee so filmy it was all but transparent. And beneath it there was nothing but the pink and white of her flesh. She wore nothing else.
She was even barefoot.
I watched in astonishment as she removed a bottle, siphon and two glasses from a small liquor cabinet and mixed two highballs. If there had been any lingering doubts in my mind as to what she wanted of me, that negligee would have halted them.
But why so lovely a woman would have picked me out of all the men in the Jefferson bar, I could not imagine.
The thought occurred to me that perhaps I was intended to be the victim of a badger game, but I instantly discarded it as inconceivable the girl would be stupid enough to attempt that stunt on a man she knew to be a cop.
When she neared to within two feet of me in order to hand me my drink, and the bright light of the lamp next to me penetrated her thin garment to expose her firm pink-tipped breasts as clearly as though she were naked, I stopped worrying about her motives. Setting down my glass on the mantel without tasting it, I removed hers from her hand, set it next to mine, and took hold of her.
Chapter 2
Approximately an hour later I discovered the reason for Jacqueline’s concentrated play for me. We were back in the sitting room by then, and I had dumped the tepid contents of our highball glasses and mixed two fresh drinks. Jacqueline sat on the sofa watching me mix them, her bare feet tucked up under her and the flimsy negligee wrapped around her so tightly it outlined her figure like a coating of cellophane.
When I passed over her drink, she patted the place next to her on the sofa in indication for me to sit down. I shook my head and looked at her without smiling.
“Why?” I asked.
“Why what, Sam?”
“Why everything? Why did you bring me up here? What do you want?”
Her smooth forehead puckered in a frown. “You mean you think there’s an angle?”
“I don’t think I’m irresistible,” I told her. “For thirty-two years women hardly give me a second glance. Then the most beautiful woman I ever saw takes one look at me and goes completely overboard. Forgive my cynicism, but I’m not exactly a dunce. There has to be an angle.”
“Maybe you’re just being modest.”
“All right,” I said. “I’m irresistible.”
I chained my drink in one swallow and set down the empty glass.
“I’ll phone you tomorrow,” I said, and started toward the door.
“Wait, Sam!”
When I stopped and turned, she said softly, “Aren’t you even going to kiss me goodnight?”
“Sure. After you tell me the angle.”
She sighed. “You make it very difficult, Sam. You make me feel like... like some kind of prostitute. Like I’m trading myself for a favor. And it isn’t that way at all. I could have just asked the favor without ever leaving the bar.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” I said.
My voice sounded weary in my own ears. One more scar to add to my collection. Even though I had known it all along, hearing her admit it was not solely my personal attraction which made her throw herself at me did something to my ego. I suddenly experienced the vaguely unclean feeling I imagine a man gets when he hands a pro her fee.
Then the explanation spilled out of her in a rush, as though she wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible.
“I knew who you were before I sat next to you downstairs,” she said. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you since yesterday. Only I didn’t want to contact you at headquarters. I had a friend with a connection downtown get me your home address, and I talked to your landlady on the phone. She told me you frequently spent off-duty time at the Jefferson bar, so today I checked in here to watch for you. I had been staying at the Statler, you see. I had a waiter point you out, and then I deliberately struck up an acquaintance.”
When she paused to get her breath, I asked, “Why?”
“The day before yesterday you arrested a girl named Minnie Joy for soliciting. At least, that’s the name she’s booked under. It isn’t her real name.”
“What is her real name?”
“Minerva Crosby,” Jacqueline said in a low voice. “She’s my older sister.”
I looked at her in astonishment. “Your sister is a hustler?”
She blushed clear down to her shoulders. “She ran away ten years ago,” she said breathlessly. “Our parents are dead and she couldn’t get along with the uncle who raised us. My uncle didn’t know it, but I’ve been corresponding with her ever since she ran away. She used to write me that she was a model, and it wasn’t until I came to St. Louis for this fashion show and looked her up that I discovered what she really was. And then before I could do anything about it, you arrested her. I want to help her, Sam. I want to take her back to Chicago with me and get her a decent job. But first I want to get her out of this jam.”
For a long while I merely regarded her curiously. Then I asked, “How?”
“Her case is set for the day after tomorrow. You’ll have to testify as the arresting officer. Couldn’t you say... I mean couldn’t you somehow fix it...?”
When her voice trailed off, I said dryly, “You mean give false evidence?”
“Well, it isn’t as though Min were a bad girl,” she said defensively. “She just hasn’t had the breaks.”
“This is her third tumble,” I said in the same dry voice. “There’s lots of work available for women her age these days, and there isn’t a reason in the world she has to make her living the way she does. I’m sorry she’s your sister, but she’s a chronic and hopeless delinquent.”
“I can pay you,” she said eagerly. Jumping from the sofa, she crossed to where she had thrown her purse onto a chair, unclasped it and withdrew a roll as thick as my wrist.
“I’m willing to give you five hundred dollars to get Min off,” she said, peeling fifty-dollar bills off the roll as she advanced on me. “Here.” She attempted to thrust them into my hand. The negligee she had forgotten about, and it hung wide open. Not that it made much difference, since it failed to conceal anything anyway.
A little roughly, I pushed her away. “Look, baby, if you want to help your sister, don’t go around trying to bribe cops. Show up in court and tell the judge your plans for rehabilitation. Maybe he’ll parole her to your custody.”
“Oh, I couldn’t. It would ruin me in the fashion field if anyone discovered my sister was a... was a... that kind of woman. Please take the money.”
In a definite tone I said, “I’m not a smart cop, Jacqueline, and maybe I’m not such a hot lover, but I’ve got one attribute I intend to hang onto. I’m an honest cop. I don’t take bribes and I wouldn’t lie in court to save my own mother from the gas chamber. Let’s drop the subject.”
She stood looking up at me, the bunched mass of fifties in one hand and the rest of the roll in the other. Her breasts rose and fell with her strained breathing.
“Now I’ll kiss you goodnight,” I said.
Without touching her with my hands, I leaned forward and planted a paternal kiss on her forehead. She was still standing there motionless when I slammed the door behind me.
Minnie Joy’s case wasn’t scheduled until the day after, but the next morning I had to be in police court to testify in another case. My partner, Jud Harrison, had a case that morning too, so after I finished my own business, I waited for him.
Jud was not only my partner, but my best friend. We were rookies together, made plain-clothes at the same time and worked together right on down the line. I don’t make friends easily; in fact, I know I have a reputation in the department as a kind of hard guy to get along with.
But Jud and I were buddies. We made a strange combination: I’m rather morose and withdrawn and Jud’s as jolly as a department-store Santa Claus, but perhaps the reason we hit it off so well was that we complemented each other. We were as close as brothers.
Jud’s case was a second offender booked under the name of Jean Darling. Rather boredly I listened to his testimony that the woman had approached him at the corner of Sixth and Locust and asked if he was interested in a little fun, whereupon he had arrested her for soliciting. She was represented by an attorney, and with only half my attention I was conscious that the lawyer was cross-examining Jud.
My attention perked up when Jud’s moonlike face grew embarrassed as he admitted the woman had not asked for money. He started to explain that he had jumped the gun before she could ask because he recognized her as a previous offender, but the defense lawyer cut him off. Brusquely the judge dismissed the charge for lack of evidence.
As we crossed the street together from the Municipal Courts Building to headquarters, I said, “How come an old hand like you loused up a case? You might have known that one wouldn’t stand up.”
“Just a bad day, I guess,” he muttered, still slightly red in the face.
But a moment later he was his usual breezy self. “What you got planned for tonight, Gloomy? Anything special?”
“No. Why?”
“Let’s do a little celebrating. Dinner at the Statler, a few drinks and a couple of floor shows.”
“Two days before pay day? You must be nuts.”
“On me, I mean,” he said. “It’s an invitation, Sad-eyes.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “Your rich uncle die?”
“I hit a horse,” he said jubilantly.
Producing his wallet, he opened it to show me a stack of bills.
“Fifty on the nose at ten to one,” he chortled. “Five hundred solid iron men.”