The Big Kiss-Off of 1944: A Jack LeVine Mystery (25 page)

Tourists choked the corridors and we kept knocking people around, drawing shouts and curses that fell on stone ears. The murals on the wall—MIRACLE OF RADIO, OPENING OF ERIE CANAL—swam past in a pastel blur. The thugs were gaining. There were fifteen yards, tops, separating us.

“Oh God, LeVine,” Savage said suddenly.

At which point a phalanx of wounded vets, in uniform, came rolling in wheelchairs from a side corridor and blocked us off. Behind them, two more rows were moving forward with surprising speed. The men looked pleased at their progress. A nurse smiled at us.

“Please let us through,” I croaked.

“What?” She didn’t understand. Nobody understands simple English words at moments like that. It’s just too difficult.

A vet heard us though and brought his chair to a quick stop, leaving a gap of maybe two feet. I raced through, holding Savage like a pull toy, and steamed toward the first bank of elevators. As we passed through, I heard a dull metallic noise as the wheelchairs closed their ranks again.

I turned to see our pursuers blocked off, six men with mashed-potato faces rendered helpless by an armada of wheelchairs. The vets were coming out in pairs now: a double phalanx of steel and spokes. I continued running, just as the vets broke ranks again and let the thugs through. Two of them squeezed past and turned on the speed.

We reached the elevator bank. All the doors were closed. No lights were on. The next bank was another thirty yards away.

“God almighty!” I tugged at Savage and turned down the corridor. The two men were twenty feet behind us. We ran hard. Savage knocked down a child and almost stopped, but I pulled at him. We were five yards from the next set when I heard a voice saying “going up” and saw a pair of doors closing.

“Hold it,” I bellowed and practically carried Savage into the elevator. The car was jam-packed.

“Comfortable?” the jockey crooned.

“Let’s go,” I grunted.

“He’s giving orders,” he joked to the others in the car. They chuckled appreciatively. “I love it when people give me orders.”

The two gorillas turned the corner and raced toward the elevator. My heart had stopped beating.

“Sorry gentlemen, full up,” the jockey told the uglies, then powered the doors shut before they could stick their paws into the car.

We started up, taking the first twenty floors nonstop. My ears popped. I turned to Savage and smiled.

“A lively start.”

He returned the smile, but weakly. There he was, immaculately dressed in a navy blue suit with the faintest gray striping, a superbly raised, educated, and groomed man of fifty-two, on the lam. It was a novel experience for Savage, and he was handling it better than I had any right to expect.

“I feel terrible about the child,” he said, wiping his brow with a spotless hanky. “He went down hard.”

“He bruised his knee. Stop worrying. You haven’t seen anything yet.”

The elevator was full of tourists, agitated at the prospect of gaping at an actual radio broadcast. Most of them got out at twenty-five, where engineering facilities and dressing rooms were located. Savage and I stepped aside to let them out. I felt myself tensing up all over again as the jockey took the short hop up to twenty-six. Savage bit his lip.

We emerged on twenty-six looking for Studio 6H. I had called Feigenbaum that afternoon to let him know Savage and I would actually be there. He had been confused—why appear, if no broadcast? I had told him an appearance was necessary, period. He said he’d be in 6H, waiting.

In Studio 6A, “A Date with Judy” was going out over the airwaves and a thirtyish doll with a blonde rinse was making like a fifteen-year-old bobbysoxer. Four men and a woman were standing in back of microphones over in 6B, getting ready to do “Mystery Theatre.” They thumbed through their scripts, joked with each other and with the engineers. It looked like more fun than the real thing. I wanted to tell them so. 6C was a little room used for news broadcasts.

And then there was 6D, a huge, drafty room used for live audience broadcasts and the site of “The Pepsodent Show.” Some musicians were already up in the bandstand, tuning up and swapping dirty stories. My destination, 611, was actually off 6D, but in order to get there you had to go the long way, around the “L” of the corridor to its end.

Savage and I turned the corridor.

They were all over the place: more muscle, more black shirts and white ties. They stood around casually, chatting with each other or just cracking their knuckles.

“Get back,” I whispered to the banker, but he had turned the corner and was spotted.

“It’s him,” someone shouted.

“This way.” I grabbed Savage and pulled him to a fire door a few yards away.

We ran through the door and down the stairs, yanking open a bulky door and emerging on the twenty-fifth floor. A pretty guide was leading a gaggle of hayseeds through the wonders of radio. They walked down the sleek, well-lit corridor toward us.

“Right this way,” the freckled redhead was saying, “are the dressing rooms, used by performers who take part in those programs done before a live audience. Tonight, for example, the stars of The Pepsodent Show,’ Charlotte Greenwood, Marty Malneck, and the Hits and Misses will all make up in these very dressing rooms.”

Behind us, I heard heavy footsteps clumping down the stairs, two at a time.

“Dressing room,” I told Savage and pulled him by the sleeve. We streaked down the corridor, to the delight and laughter of the tour group, who thought it was staged for their benefit. The guide, with her turned-up nose, examined us quizzically, then led the group past the fire door, just as it opened. Two burly men emerged and looked from side to side. Savage and I, obscured from view by the herd of tourists, flattened ourselves against the wall. The two men ducked back down the stairs.

Savage and I walked into the dressing room, a long narrow area broken up by partitions. It was deserted.

“Let’s sit in the back,” I said.

We sat down heavily on a bench, breathing hard.

“LeVine, this is impossible,” Savage finally gasped. Sweat glistened in fine diamonds on his forehead. “We’re blocked off. Let’s just try and get out in one piece.”

“The hell with that. We’ve gotten this far. All we have to do is get into that big studio, cut through a small stretch of corridor and we’re in. It’s a matter of timing.”

“But they spotted me the second …”

The door of the dressing room swung open. I held my breath.

A young man entered, a scrubbed and combed lad of perhaps twenty. He wore a red-and-white candy-striped sports jacket, white slacks, and white shoes. A straw hat adorned his head.

“Can I help you?” he asked pleasantly.

I stood up. “LeVine, Associated Press,” I told him, flashing one of my numerous press cards. “And my partner, Smokey Savage. You with the Hits and Misses?”

He nodded. “Since last year. Sit down, please, gentlemen.” He pulled over a chair. “I was 4-F and always thought I could carry a tune. Came down here from Hartford, auditioned for the H & M and they took me right on. You doing a story on us?”

“I’d like to. A Sunday piece.” I fingered the sap in my pocket.

“Well, let me see what I can tell you.” He got up and spun around, holding his hands against the back of his neck. He was a sweet kid, if a little fey. I didn’t enjoy stepping forward, pushing his hat over his eyes and cracking him on the back of the skull.

“JACK!” gasped Savage.

The kid was on the floor, good for an hour of rest and a day of headaches.

“Had to be done, Savage. Help me with the suit. It’ll fit you like a glove.”

Savage knelt beside me. “You expect me to …”

“It’s the only way we’re going to get in there.”

“We’re both going to dress up?”

“Of course. Next kid comes in, I’ll have to sap him, too. Means and ends, Mr. Savage. It’s a bad world. Now let’s step on it.”

In two minutes, Savage was a Hit and Miss, and junior was sleeping in a broom closet with a gag in his mouth.

“He’ll stay out?” asked the banker, who had gotten quickly accustomed to knocking people unconscious. He stood in front of a full-length mirror. The outfit was a little small, but not enough to draw any stares.

“God, this is ridiculous,” he said to the mirror.

“It’ll do. Stay out of the way, back of the partition. I don’t want you spotted.”

Savage ducked out of sight just as the door opened again. Another Hit and Miss waltzed in, this one a little longer in the tooth than the first victim of LeVine’s duplicity.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked.

“Jack LeVine, AP.”

“AP?” He didn’t believe me any more than if I had said I was Sam Goldwyn. “C’mon, take a powder.”

“You don’t like newspapermen?”

“I don’t like shit artists and I can always spot one. I don’t know what you want and I don’t care. People come in here …”

A knee in the groin slowed him to a gentlemanly walk, the sap finished him nice and easy. Savage came out and dragged off the Hit’s clothes, gagged him and locked him into the crowded closet. We were getting pretty good at it.

“I didn’t know this was going to be so damned ugly,” Savage said softly, as I hopped out of my slacks and into the white ducks. I put on the shirt, bow tie and jacket, then squeezed into the shoes, before putting my clothes up on a hanger.

“Fucking shoes,” I mumbled.

“Too small?”

“It’ll look like I’m walking on coals.”

We walked—Savage walked, I hobbled—to the door. The banker turned around.

“Will our clothes be safe?”

“Probably. It’s the least of our worries. You have your wallet?”

“Certainly.”

“Then we’re set.” I inhaled and let all the air out of my body. Savage put his hand on the door knob.

“LeVine, no matter what happens, I’ll be forever grateful for the imagination and courage …”

“Save it. I’m being well paid. Now let’s blow before another one of those monkeys comes in here. And put your skimmer lower.”

Savage shoved the straw hat further down on his brow and opened the door.

“Here goes nothing.”

And we were out the door, walking down the little tiled hallway about as casually as two priests in a strip joint. Another flock of tourists paraded down the main corridor and their guide pointed us out. She was a black-haired beauty with hourglass curves.

“On your right you can see two members … of the Hits and Misses?” She had wavered a bit toward the end of the sentence.

I beamed. “That’s right.”

Excited squeals burst forth from the group and a few ladies broke ranks to press forward with their autograph books. The guide flashed a perfect smile and shrugged helplessly.

I signed a few books “Vance LePantz” and Savage scribbled God knows what. We thanked everybody profusely and headed for the stairs.

“They use the stairs?” I heard a sharp-eyed woman ask the guide. I turned and smiled again. The guide looked at me a little funny, knowing something was out of whack somehow. I blew her a kiss. She pursed her lips, then her face relaxed and she laughed and turned to lead her group. She could have led me anywhere. I followed her progress for just a moment; the wistful shamus remembering a girl who looked like her, a long time before.

We started up the stairs and Savage asked a very germane question.

“LeVine, how many people are in this fool singing group?”

I thought it over. “You mean if it’s a lot we get lost in the shuffle and if it’s a quartet we’re sitting ducks?”

“Exactly.”

“We’ll just have to see, Mr. Savage. I don’t have the slightest idea. Let’s just get to 6D, grab some sheet music and sit in a corner for a while.”

“Kind of hide?”

“Kind of.”

We cautiously opened the door on twenty-six and looked down the hall. It was empty and we ventured out, resplendent in our candy-stripes. My feet were killing me: when I stared down at my shoes I saw them bulging out on the sides.

It was then that Eli W. Savage began humming “Moonlight in Vermont.” Loudly. I looked up in amazement and saw two of the heavies coming down the hall toward us.

“You’re doing it in D,” I told the banker.

“Marty said D.”

They were ten feet away, a couple of warehouses with crewcuts.

“Also it’s ‘
pen
-nies in a stream.’ Like two words.”

They passed by, cursing to themselves. They didn’t know us from the Holland Tunnel.

“A
syc-
amore.”

They kept walking and we reached 6D, pushing open two large glass doors.

“Very neat, Savage, very neat indeed.”

“This detective work is excellent mental exercise.” He smiled and shook his head. “Amazingly so.”

“Try doing it for a month. You’ll
feel
your brain shrinking.”

I was conscious of eyes upon us. When I turned around, I noticed that people were already in the audience, gawking at the preparations and studied casualness of the men behind the microphones. Some of the hayseeds were staring at Savage and me. There was a little applause.