Hard-boiled

[FNAWrite]

"THE CASE OF THE LOST DOLL"

My name is Mort Main. I'm a private investigator. I'm licensed in six states which means I've been able to barely earn a living from Boston to Oakland and from the Great Lakes to the Louisiana bayous. These days a lot of gumshoes earn the price of bonded bourbon by hooking up with law firms or doing commercial or industrial investigations. Not me. For me, nothing beats the thrill of a beautiful dame coming through the door of a second floor walk-up office and saying "I need your help." Of course, that's not exactly how this caper got started.
I was in my new second floor walk-up office in Jersey City, New Jersey. Yeah, I know Jersey City doesn't sound like a hot bed of intrigue and action, but it's only the Holland Tunnel away from the heart of Manhattan and if you can't make a go of this business that close to New York City, it's time to hang up your rubber soles.

How I ended up here is that my secretary, Iris, has a maiden aunt who lived in Jersey City. Well, actually she used to have a maiden aunt here, along with the rest of her family, but the old broad kicked over and left the ancestral pile of bricks to Iris. I know better than most that a good secretary is hard to find, so when Iris informed me that she was going to set up housekeeping in Aunt Dorcas' brownstone, I packed my files, my Nikon and my .38 and headed north from the Big Easy to the Big Apple (or at least close enough to see the skyline). Besides, I owed Iris about eight weeks back pay over the last couple of years and I didn't have the ante to get into the goodbye game.

So there I was sitting in my new digs wondering what kind of a sap builds a bottom desk drawer that's not tall enough to stand a fifth of Booker Noe bourbon in, when Iris buzzed me and said that there was a Mr. Smith to see me. At least the imagination of people around here is no worse than anywhere else in the country. I shook my head, then told her she'd better cancel John Doe's appointment and send in Mr. Smith. I looked at the bottle again, then stood it up under my desk. Laying a bottle on its side might be okay for somebody with a cellar full of wine, but I like to be able to tell how many drinks I have left at a glance.

The two windows behind my desk faced the new twenty story office tower next door to the tobacconist I rented a floor from, so a good portion of the light in my dim office came through the opaque glass of my office door from the reception area where Iris kept enough 100 watt bulbs burning to dry the six types of nail polish she tried on every day. That's why I was in the dark when I saw Mr. Smith and I mean in more ways than one. When he ducked his head and stepped into the office it was like an brown pinstriped eclipse as he filled the doorway from jam to jam.

I figured at least the job wouldn't involve knocking any heads together because if this guy was a college graduate, that had been his major and I'd bet he made the dean's list. He had an honest face; honest in that it didn't try to fool you into thinking it was anything but butt ugly. His small eyes peered out from a mass of scar tissue above and around a nose that had lost track of the number of times it had been broken two or three punches back. His head sat squarely on his shoulders, at least I couldn't see any sign of a neck except for an unbuttoned collar that still was too tight. When I introduced myself and stuck out my hand, it disappeared into a biscuit grabber the size of a small ham and just as red and bony.

It turned out the big mug had lost his doll. I was just sharp enough to not crack wise when he gave me this news in just those words, but I slipped up and snorted when he showed me a picture of her. In the wallet size color snap, I could see 'Smith' with his arm around the shoulders of the cutest and maybe the tiniest bathing beauty I had ever seen. A second later I felt my lapels coming in to meet my tie and my brogans leaving the floor. Now I'd said "So long pal" to 190 pounds quite a few thick-cut sirloins back, but it didn't seem to bother the gorilla in pinstripes too much as he held me off the floor in one tight fist. I guess he was a bit touchy about his girl.

In a funny voice I explained real quickly how I was just struck by the fact that dames always would cut out when they had an obvious good thing. Then in an even funnier voice, I explained as how I was generally indiscriminate in my use of the term dame and that when it came to Doll Arden, I meant it in the only nicest possible way. Sure, I recognized Doll Arden, surprise singing smash of the surprise off-Broadway hit of the theatre season. It didn't take me long in this business to figure out that all the important news can be found in the entertainment and gossip sections of the dailies.

As my feet settled again on the threadbare carpet of my office, I asked Mr. Smith just when he had lost his doll, Doll. He tells me that Doll had been acting screwy for a couple of months, but everything seemed hunky-dory lately, at least until last night which was the closing night of her big show and he had never seen her after and he had flowers and everything. Turns out she lived over here and commuted to the city and when he checked her apartment, she'd never come home all night. I got the distinct unpleasant experience of meeting Mr. Smith because Doll's apartment was right up the street from my new office and he had piped my shingle, fresh-painted over the street door.

I wished I hadn't said that she was probably just partying with the cast all night because suddenly my toes were just brushing the floor again and I heard a seam tear under the arm of my jacket and this time his mashed in nose was a lot closer to mine. I explained as how that was what they did in the theatre and in this case I certainly only meant partying in the very nicest possible way. I guess he was a touchy about not getting invited to parties, too.

I sized up the cut of his suit and told him I got a hundred and fifty a day plus expenses. He pulled out three dirty, crumpled bills, stuck them in my hand, then closed my hand over the money and his big mitt over all. He tells me I should have her here the next day at five o'clock or he's gonna take his money back and my arm along with it. As my knuckles made like an accordion, I figured this probably wasn't the time to ask what if she didn't want to come by, so I instead I mentioned that my just asking for "Mr. Smith" if I had to go looking for him might make the job a little tougher. He suggested that looking for him was probably a bad idea, but allowed as how Mister wasn't exactly friendly since we were going to be pals once I brought his Doll back and he reached the hand that wasn't making broken dice out of my knuckles into his coat pocket. That still didn't look too friendly to me, but when his hand came back out, all it held was a small white card.

He freed my hand, I checked each wadded bill for the right number of zeroes and stuffed the three C-notes in my pants pocket, then took his card and read it. Baringer Thorpe Smith III, Sales Representative, Scarlatti Carting and Refuse Removal. Here was a guy six and a half feet tall who weighed at least 300 pounds and was as hard and cold and mean as a fifty pound block of ice dropped on some puppies and his name was Barry? I was glad he said "Call me Tiny" because I'd have been hanging from my lapels again since I figured he was probably likewise touchy about his name.

I followed him out through the reception room so I could have Iris stitch up the sleeve of my jacket. I saw him out the door then shrugged off my coat while Iris chattered on the phone. I was about to remind her that she was on my time when I realized two things. One, I hadn't been able to pay her after I made the deposit on this two room suite, and two, she was talking about Doll Arden.
Turns out Iris was talking to her mother who was telling her in the way of local news that by-the-by, big star Doll Arden was a local girl from way back and Iris' mom and Doll's mom was just like that even when Doll was just little Delores Arronez. I told Iris to call her mother back because we were going over for a little visit as soon as I got back from dropping in at Doll Arden's place and she got finished sewing up my coat.

I walked up the street in my shirt sleeves whistling "Hello Dolly!" because most of the time I just can't help myself. Doll's place was no further than the end of my block, on the third floor of what must have once been a nice hotel and which now housed people whose immediate ambition was to make enough money so that they could move away from the crumbling pile. From what I had read in papers, Doll would be moving soon.

The hallway was dim and the floor uncarpeted and scuffed, but the door to Doll's apartment was made of real wood and looked strong and heavy with ornate panels and a fancy gilded knob. Yeah, fifty years ago this probably was the joint to crib in, in Jersey City.

When I knocked, the door wobbled sickly like a drunk after midnight and when I tried the knob, the heavy door pushed open crookedly on its one remaining hinge. I guess Tiny Smith had wanted to make sure that Doll hadn't slipped in the bathtub or something and just couldn't answer the bell. The place wasn't too torn up; Tiny had just broken some furniture and lamps, although it did look like he had punched her freezer. Looking at that folded white enameled door I ran my tongue over my teeth and moved my jaw around. The scene here only confirmed my earlier judgment that Tiny Smith was the kind of a guy you always hit with something other than your fist.

I wedged the door closed to give the place a quick but closer look. As I said, Tiny had pretty much concentrated only on the larger appliances, I guess out of a sense of sportsmanship. I found what I was looking for slipped between the arms of a plush bear holding a heart. In my business, you gotta be sensitive to the way a broad might think. What I found was a small note detailing a large love for Doll Arden and it was signed Tommy, not Tiny or Baringer Thorpe Smith III.

I wanted to find Doll more than ever now, to tell her it was time for her to take her final bow and exit stage right, preferably to somewhere with an ocean between her and Tiny Smith. I pulled the door back into its frame as I left and walked back through the afternoon sun to see if Iris had finished seaming my jacket. She had.

We took Iris' '64 Coronet to a neat little rowhouse about twenty blocks out of downtown. Iris' mom was an okay jane who kept a bottle of Jim Beam Green Label in memory of the departed mister, (whom did I know Iris was the spitting image of?), which label happened to be his favorite poison. We thissed and thatted for a while which was alright because as we did, we all enjoyed a splash of the Beam, which Iris and her mom took with ice and a bit of water, but hey, I'd be the first to admit that I don't understand all the mysterious ways of women.

We eventually got to the point, which was sure Iris' mom knew Sylvia Arronez, Arronez being Doll Arden's real handle, and Sylvia still lived in the same old house just outside of Bayonne, on the southern edge of town, where she and Iris' mom had first met when they were girls. Iris' mom asked Iris to the kitchen to help make sandwiches and told me to make myself to home, so while they were at it I poured another three fingers of the departed mister's premium bourbon and light-fingered the keys to Iris' car from her purse.

I finished my drink and a couple of sandwiches then headed straight for the door. I jingled Iris' keys at her, told her to pick a bus schedule up for me too, while she was at it, and closed the door behind me.
Mrs. Sylvia Arronez lived on the other side of town but as the Jersey City streets were laid out so logically it only took me about two hours to find it. She didn't appear eager to talk to any mug in a cheap, stitched-up suit and fedora hat, but once I told her that I got her name from Iris' mom, her door opened wide and she invited me right in. I guess it's the local custom because Sylvia Arronez also happened to keep around a bottle of the departed mister's favorite poison which in the case of Joe Arronez, (whom did I know Delores was the spitting image of?), was Wild Turkey rye.

We thissed a little but didn't that so much, Sylvia being the kind of a talker who liked to stick to her special field of expertise, which in her case was her daughter, Delores. Sylvia was also the kind of woman who, even if she liked her rye with ginger ale, liked her talk straight. She tells me that Delores was called Doll even as a child because she was so tiny and adorable, although it would have broken the mister's heart had he lived to see her take Arden as a last name, as if to say to be an Arronez was not good enough for her. She goes on to tell me that Doll always was a little wild, living in her own place and not at home like a good girl should and hanging around with those crazy show business people.

Sylvia Arronez stopped to wet her own whisperer and to offer me another neat splash of Kentucky's best kept secret. We both toasted the departed mister's good taste in whiskey and his beautiful and talented daughter. Doll's mom then continued by telling me that now that Doll is a big star she's giving up her old wild ways, and has come home to live and maybe even get married to a nice boy and settle down, this last being passed on with a nod and a wink, by way of explaining that such information was privileged and confidential and should be kept under my seven and five-eighths worth of felt.
I winked back and tipped my glass slightly to the proud mama and my obvious discretion is rewarded by the relating of the fact that indeed, Doll had come by with a suitcase yesterday, slept at home last night for the first time in years and that Sylvia expected her back again tonight, for only the second restful night a beautiful young girl's mother such like Sylvia would be able to enjoy in a likewise number of years.

I thanked Sylvia Arronez for her hospitality, grabbed my hat and let her show me to the door. I waved to her again before sliding behind the wheel of Iris' big Dodge and rolling down the street. I made a right at the corner and continued around the block to pull up and park two doors down from the Arronez place, which maneuver only took a mile and quarter due to the one-way streets. I sat on the bench seat smoking Pall Malls and listening to Spanish music on the AM radio while waiting for Doll Arden to come home.
I went through Iris' glove compartment before it was completely dark (hey, I'm a detective, it's what I do), and found a mini-vac with a cigarette lighter adaptor. I had vacuumed the ashes from the lap of my pants and was working on my jacket when a little sports car pulled up across the street from Doll's mother's house.

A tall good-looking kid unfolded himself from out of the driver's seat, then went around and opened the passenger door and Doll Arden stepped out, staring into tall and slim's eyes the whole time. They held hands and cooed at each other long enough for me to get a crick in my neck from slouching down, until finally Doll's clean cut escort folded himself back into the little car. She waved and blew kisses as he drove away and I wrote a mental memo to Iris to stock her glove box with some air sick bags too.
I called to Doll by the name Joe Arronez had given her and told her we had to talk about her ex-boyfriend, Tiny Smith. Doll didn't seem to be worried about Tiny or someone that could have been one of his friends or business associates because she told me where I could put my hat while calling me names I hadn't heard since I was a rookie on the Chicago P.D. twenty-five years before. You can bet I voted for Nixon.

It wasn't easy, but I eventually got her calmed down enough to both listen and talk. Actually, she did very little listening and mostly kept busy letting me in on how Tiny stunk, how I most likely stunk and how my idea about leaving the vicinity of the one and only Broadway stunk too, maybe as much as both Tiny and I stunk together. She tells me not for nothing but maybe I didn't know that Tiny Smith was a goon and that a girl from Jersey City don't need his rocks, frocks or flowers, nor paws nor bad breath neither when she hooks up with a good, hard working joe like Tommy Neale who has got a good honest American job like driving the ferry to the Statue of Liberty and now that Tommy was captain, they were going to get married and she didn't care who knew, she would shout it from the nearest stage and if he didn't like it, Tiny could just drop dead.

After that, she had to stop and catch her breath so I took the opportunity to tell her that not only was I pretty sure Tiny wouldn't like it, I figured he felt the same as her only he wouldn't wait for her to just drop. Turns out that Doll was not only a singer, she was a pretty good actress besides, because she had already figured this out well before she practiced her vocabulary on me, this being why she was cribbing at Mom's, since Tiny only knew she was Doll Arden and knew nothing about Delores Arronez.
I figure if she is smart enough to move out of her place, maybe she's not so dumb as to shout any wedding banns from any nearby stage, which she confirms she ain't. So of course my next question is just how dumb is Tommy Neale, boy ferry captain? But of course, this I can answer myself because if I was hooked up with the hottest little number off-Broadway (or on for that matter), I might not have been shouting it from a stage but I would certainly be lording it over all my friends, acquaintances and co-workers and any other male who happened to pass within crowing distance.

That's when I saw the catch. Tommy Neale runs the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. So where and with who do harbour jockeys eat lunch and maybe have a cold one after work? Down on the docks with the other harbour jocks. And can we figure that other harbour jocks includes such like as the skippers from the tugs that pull the garbage scows? You can bet that horse to win. The catch was who else was probably talking to the scow pullers. It was another sure thing that Tiny Smith, in his capacity as "sales rep" for Scarlatti Carting and Refuse Removal, was a frequent visitor to the docks, to make sure that the proper grease had been spread and I don't mean on their capstans. So when Tiny, to pass the time of day, laments his missing Doll, who could blame the working stiff who might think that getting on Tiny's good side is better than getting knocked around and who happens to mention by-the-by that Captain Tommy Neale is now docking in Doll's slip.

I persuade Doll to stay put and lay low by telling her about my meeting the next day with Tiny Smith. I told her I was confident I could convince him of the error of his ways, but she still didn't like it until I outlined the argument I planned on using, which I happen to wear clipped to my belt. I also told her to call the new boyfriend and have him lay low too, just in case. Last I gave her one of my business cards, which I took back just long enough to scratch out my old New Orleans phone number and write my new one down.

Around eleven o'clock I showed up at the office to get set for my five o'clock show down. Iris tells me that Doll has been calling all morning and hands me a bus schedule. She kept her hand out with the palm turned up. I was still wearing yesterday's suit, torn sleeve and all, to put me in the proper frame of mind when Tiny came by, so I could pull two of his crumpled C-notes out of the pocket, flatten them out on Iris' desk, then slip them into the bus schedule which I placed in Iris' upturned palm. I told her I can never read fine print before lunch anyway, so until then she could maybe use it to mark her place in the trashy detective novel she was currently reading.

I told Iris to call Doll back and that I would take the call in my office. In the harsh light of day, Doll was a lot less tough than after a night of champagne and dancing and she was scared for Tommy Neale who had laughed off her advice to lay low and had gone about his business as usual, with a smile on his lips and a spring in his step. Just seeing him once and hearing about the All-American boy was bad enough, but now it looked like I needed to have a face to face chat with Doll's beau to insure that he avoided a face to fist chat with Tiny Smith. I told Doll to stay planted and that I'd go down and see Tommy Neale at work.

I passed back through the reception room, telling Iris that I would see her after lunch to pick up the bus schedule. I drove down to Liberty State Park right out of town on the New York Bay and hopped on the Statue of Liberty ferry as it pulled out. I asked some guy in a uniform where I could find Captain Neale; he pointed out over the water to another ferry just pulling away from the island the Statue stood on. Turns out they kind of always the loop the place with one coming and one going the whole time.

I figure I'll just catch the guy on the next trip and as long as I'm out there, I might as well make like a tourist like everybody else. So I go over to Lady Liberty and hike up her skirt to see what she's made of. It was a long hike and I was regretting a lot of Pall Malls and cheeseburgers and wishing for a couple of cold beers by the time I got to the top. It was a good view from up there and besides, as I have said before, in this business, it pays to know how to get inside a dame's head. I could see a ferry heading back towards the statue from the bayside park, so I hustled back down to the ground in time to be able to catch a smoke before I boarded.

On the ferry, I found another uniform and told him I wanted to see Tommy Neale. He told me I'd have to wait till we docked which was okay because I'd rather talk to the kid after I stopped coughing and wheezing. I lounged around the bow watching the white dome of what somebody had told me was the Science building grow larger and larger as we closed on the park. I had to admit, he might have been new at it, but the kid could really jockey that big awkward looking boat. From the look of it he was going to dock just like the guy had on my way out to the island. On that trip we had lined up with the docking slip and cruised in without seeming to slow down at all until the skipper suddenly backwatered and the nose of the ferry just kissed the bumpers at the end of the slip.

When where I stood on the bow passed the dock's outer pilings and I still didn't feel the engines rumbling into reverse, I revised my estimate of the kid and moved away from the front of the boat and looked for something to grab onto. I guessed Tommy Neale was a show boat, but I figured he wasn't going to get the reviews Doll had because we were sure going to dock with a thump. Turned out it wasn't so much a thump as an incredible crash. Sirens were going off, bells were ringing, people were shouting and screaming and I was heading at a run up the gangway that led to the pilot house.

I could have took my time because when I got there, I saw one guy in uniform working controls and shouting orders into some kind of microphone, another guy sitting by the door trying to hold together what looked like a broken jaw and cheekbone and Tommy Neale lying on the deck up by the controls. Tommy had that surprised look people get when their heads get twisted around so they're looking at their own shoulder blades.

The guy who had got the facial didn't look like he could help too much, but I asked him what happened anyway. He could have just been gurgling on his own blood but it sure sounded to me like he said "Big" and if any one word besides ugly described Tiny Smith, that was it. I was about to offer the guy a smoke to help take his mind off his troubles, when it occurred to me that I had been asking crew members for Tommy Neale on this trip and the one before. I pulled out my handkerchief and gently patted off some of the blood still dripping from his nose and mouth, then I eased back out the door I came in through, clapped the bloody cloth to my head and joined the crowd being helped back onto ashore. Somebody pointed me toward some flashing red lights and I walked over to and then past the in-rushing ambulances and back to Iris' car.

It wasn't that I wanted to avenge Tommy Neale's death personally and it wasn't that I was such a stiff as to think that I could take Tiny Smith down by myself in a fair fight. It was that I knew that if I went to the cops and told them my story, I'd be sitting downtown when it came time for my appointment with Tiny. And I figured that if I told them and they tried to stake out my office, Tiny had that sort of brute cunning that would keep him away if the man was anywhere near. And that brought me to my main reason which was that the longer Tiny was on the loose, the better chance he had of getting to Doll or anybody else who had crossed him and any way you looked at it, I had to be the leading candidate in that poll.

I drove the speed limit back to my office above the tobacconist. I gave Iris her keys back and told her to take the rest of the afternoon off. I figured it couldn't hurt to have the cops looking everywhere I wasn't, so I put my handkerchief over the end of the phone and dialed the police, then took the handkerchief off when I realized I'd only been in town two weeks and nobody knew my voice. I put the finger on Baringer Smith III of Scarlatti Carting in connection with the ferry murder and hung up. I went into my office and closed the door, checked that the cylinder was full and the safety off on my .38 and sat on one of the hard chairs against the wall to wait.

I was in even more of a bad mood by five o'clock because I hate smoking with my left hand and my right was occupied staying close to my gun. It was right when the factory whistle used to blow that I heard the door to the outer office open. I got up and moved over to lean on my desk facing the door, keeping my arms crossed in front of me with my heater in plain view to discourage any emotional scenes.
I got the eclipse effect again, this time in blue serge as Tiny opened the inner door and stepped through it. I had to give him credit, he was as cool as a ball park beer, because the first thing he did was to ask me where Doll was. I told him she was at the church praying over a kid with 20-20 hindsight. He grunted that the kid shouldn't have tried to steal his girl and so where was she any way and if I knew what had happened to the kid, he guessed I knew what was gonna happen next. I pulled back the hammer on my .38 and told him that yeah, I did know what was happening next. First, he was gonna sit down and relax and after that I was gonna call the cops and after that he was gonna go away and not be around to bother cute kids like Doll or busy guys like me anymore.

He looked at me, looked at the gun pointing straight at him, grunted again and asked me if I wanted to see how he did it. I told him I'd wait and read about in the papers, but he stepped toward me so I plugged him.

At least I thought I shot him but the next thing I know he swatted the gun out of my hand and slammed me back into the desk. We almost tumbled right over, but as my luck will often have it, I just ended up on my back with my head and shoulders hanging over the edge and Tiny banging my head on the seat of my chair by the neck and his knee trying to press my floating ribs into my blotter.

My arms were flailing around and things were getting fuzzy as Tiny pressed thumbs the size of bratwurst into my throat. My right hand bumped something under my desk. I somehow stopped flailing and felt my fingers close around the neck of a bottle. My Booker Noe! I whipped my arm up and bashed Tiny on the side of the head. He blinked and his hands loosened around my neck for a brief second. Since the bottle hadn't broken and it was almost full I gave him another shot on the house. Go figure - his eyes opened wide as if a percussive skull bongo was just what he needed to wake him up. I swung my arm out and whipped the bottle at his knob one more time. This time it broke and so did he. As he slumped to the left and fell to the floor, his fingers left my throat and his knee rolled off my chest, allowing me to gasp for air and get a big whiff of what had splashed down as the bottle shattered against Tiny's tough dome. I hate wasting good bourbon on someone who can't appreciate it and just ends up passing out.

After the cops came and took Tiny away, I sat behind my desk with broken glass crunching under my feet. I was looking at the broken neck of the bottle and fingering the last of the crumpled hundreds I had got from Tiny Smith and wondering what to do for the rest of the night when suddenly it came to me. Like me, Iris' mom kept the departed mister's bottle of Green Label standing upright and by my last look there were still a half dozen drinks left in it. I called Iris at home and asked if she wanted to go out for drinks and sandwiches.

AFTERWORD

As you might have expected, Doll Arden took the news of Tommy Neale's violent death hard. But even though they were engaged, they had only known each other a couple of months and Doll being a trouper, soon enough she was garnering rave reviews in a new show, on Broadway this time. A year later she was in Hollywood, three months after that she married her agent on a drunken holiday in Mexico and three months after that she was in jail accused of cutting off her future children's inheritance at the source, if you get my drift. Maybe I've been in this racket too long, but it looks to me maybe that getting his head ripped off was the best thing that could have happened to Tommy Neale. I don't know, maybe that's just show biz.