Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 51, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2006
- Автор: Бетанкур Джон Грегори, Jr. William J. Carroll,
- Год: 2006
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines/Crosstown Publications
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 51, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2006». Краткое содержание книги:
With a hand to her elbow, Ralph helped her onto a bar stool. “You gotta problem? Tell Ralph all about it,” he crooned.
“My problem, Ralph,” she said sarcastically, “is that you let two-bit grifters in this joint.”
“This is a dandy speakeasy.”
“Oh yeah? Somebody snatched my purse while I was sitting here at the bar minding my own business,” she spluttered with anger and gin.
“You don’t say?”
She turned to the bartender, a fat, older man, his bald head as smooth and gleaming as his bland, doughy face. “Joe, who’d you serve next to me?”
“Don’t you know yourself, Marilyn? Maybe you ought to take it easy on the booze.”
“Give a girl a break,” she snapped.
“No one ever sat down next to you,” the young rumrunner chimed in with a wink. “I would have noticed the competition.”
She elbowed him away.
“Are you sure you had your purse when you came in?” Ralph the bouncer asked. “You were pretty sauced.”
“’Course I had it,” she said, slurring, thinking back, not so sure even as she said it.
“I never saw a purse,” Joe offered as he wiped a glass clean.
She’d come directly from the hotel and Ray. The schmuck. Had she had it then? Her head was so fuzzy. She shouldn’t have drunk so much. She pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead, trying to force clarity back. She’d be dead tomorrow if she didn’t get that purse back. Ray would never cut her any slack now.
“Ralph, give me a few bucks for cab fare? Ray won’t mind,” she pleaded.
The bartender hit a key on the cash register, a bell tinkled, and the wooden drawer shot open. “Anything for the boss.” He counted a couple of bills into her palm.
She pulled on the fur coat that Ray had once given her, then left, wobbling between slanting walls and floor toward the shifting door.
Outside, a violent spring wind off the river howled through the unforgiving granite canyons of the Detroit streets. She wrapped her fur coat around her and breathed deeply, hoping the chill, grimy air would clear the muck from her head. The uniformed cop paid to turn a blind eye to the speakeasy tipped his cap to her. “Miss Marilyn.”
“Even’,” she mumbled unsteadily, the wind pushing at her, making it impossible to stand still. A trolley rumbled by. In too much of a hurry to be inching along jammed in with businessmen, she let it pass.
“Would you be needing a cab?” he asked.
“Yeah, and be quick about it,” she said, attempting to snap her fingers unsuccessfully.
He whistled and an ancient Model-T ducked out of traffic and rattled to a stop. Negotiating the cab door proved an impossible challenge and she was glad of the cop’s help.
“The Book Cadillac Hotel,” she told the driver, a kid who didn’t look old enough for long pants, much less driving.
“Right away, Miss Marilyn,” he chirped, small behind the big wheel.
They all knew her as Ray’s moll. If they didn’t know already, soon they would know how Ray had dumped her. Then they would hear how she had disappeared, and some time after that, they would hear how her corpse had been found in the river.
With a series of pops that sounded like gunshots, the kid driver pulled out into the chaotic late-afternoon traffic.
In the back seat, she realized one of her silk stockings was sagging around her ankle. Stupid things. Viciously, she pulled it up, and after several attempts to manipulate fingers that had turned fat and sausagelike, she straightened the seam, and re-rolled it above her knee, tearing a gaping hole in the silk in the process. “Hell’s bells,” she muttered.
Surveying the congested disorder of vehicles and pedestrians in front of the Book Cadillac Hotel, James O’Neill admired the pale, spring sunshine slanting down into the street, warming and softening the granite of the tall buildings.
The flash of a pretty ankle caught his eye as a flapper in a fur coat clambered into a cab, dropping her purse on the sidewalk in the process. Too late he rushed forward. The cab nosed into traffic as a boy pounced, scooped up the purse, and was about to make off with it.
“Pardon me, lad.” O’Neill grabbed the young thief’s collar and relieved him of the purse. “Would you care to show me your name on that purse?”
Grimacing with the effort, the boy squirmed until he broke free, then dove into the river of black-bodied cars tearing through the square.
For an instant, O’Neill considered giving chase, then decided it was already a lost cause. From an island in the center of the boiling, churning river of traffic, the blue-capped boy made a rude gesture at him, then continued nimbly dodging automobiles until he reached the safety of the other side of the street and disappeared.
O’Neill loosened the purse’s drawstrings. Inside was a wad of bills, a flask, and a derringer, but nothing identifying the owner. He pulled the purse closed.
A doorman in uniform stood stonily at attention in front of the revolving glass door of the hotel, his eyes alert, taking in the scene. O’Neill approached. The man’s alarmed gaze skittered away from the bulge of a gun in O’Neill’s pocket.
“Might you know that young lady, sir?” O’Neill asked.
Startled at being spoken to, the doorman eyed him suspiciously, not recognizing him and trying to figure out where he fit in. The doorman’s gaze flitted from sidewalk to street then back again, watching for trouble.
O’Neill waited patiently, letting the man take his time.
Finally, the doorman glanced over his shoulder at the hotel one last time, screwed his face up with the effort of coming to a decision, then blasted an answer as if it were a painful belch, “Sure I know. Everyone knows her. That was Marilyn.”
“Marilyn Massie?” O’Neill’s pulse quickened at this bit of luck. That explained the purse’s contents. “And might you happen to know where I could find her?”
Before he could reply, two dapper men emerged from the hotel and gestured for a cab. Out of the corner of his eye, O’Neill sized up the men, members of the Purple Gang emerging from their headquarters in the hotel. Young, sleek, arrogant. Too arrogant, fortunately, to take notice of him.
A whistle brought a shiny new Packard to the curb. The doorman rushed to help the men climb in. The car leapt out into traffic and the doorman returned. “Big tippers,” he said disparagingly, displaying the nickel in his palm before pocketing it. Back at his station at the door, a little less wary, the doorman asked, “Who wants to know about Marilyn?”
Shrugging nonchalantly, O’Neill held up a five dollar bill. “She dropped her purse. Call me a good Samaritan. I want to return it to her.” He raised the purse and gave it a shake for emphasis with a sheepish grin.
A smile tweaked the doorman’s unexpressive mouth. “She probably went to the club. That’s where she spends most of her evenings if she’s not here.”
“The club?” O’Neill asked, not sure which of the Purples’ blind pigs he meant.
The man’s eyes widened slightly in surprise, and his glance shifted again to the concealed gun. “You new to Detroit?”
O’Neill nodded.
The doorman looked away and muttered under his breath as if he were a spy relaying a password, “The Kibbutzer Club. On Woodward, near Columbia. Rap three times.”
O’Neill shook the man’s hand, slipping the five spot to him. “Appreciate it.”
At the Book Cadillac Hotel, Marilyn pushed through the glass door and entered a lobby plush with furniture and bright with the light of many-tiered chandeliers, the well-dressed guests as new and shiny with unrespectable wealth as the lobby.
One of the house dicks, a front man for the Purple Gang on Ray’s payroll, leaned over the coat check counter toward the girl behind it, his back to her, engrossed in his flirtation.