Tough as Nails: The Complete Cases of Donahue From the Pages of Black Mask (45 page)

Hinkle sighed. “I see. I see your mind’s set.” He sighed again, looked at his empty glass. “This business of ours is a pretty lousy one at times, Donny…. Any word of her?”

“No. She sent me flowers once at the hospital. I tried to get in touch with her at her old address. No go. I don’t know where she went—or why. But I’ve got some feelers out. I’ve got to find her before her father does—or Libbey, or Kelly McPard. Kelly read a book once on how to be a cop and it went to his head. And Libbey’s drunk himself to the point where he has to bring in big news all the time or he’ll lose his job. That puts me right in a nice bed of roses—with plenty thorns.”

Hinkle said: “Her old man may prove troublesome.”

“You’re telling me?”

Donahue tossed a bill on the bar and got a quarter change.

“Where are you going, Donny?”

“I was on my way when I stopped here…. There’s a little blonde trying to catch your eye. What would Mrs. Hinkle say?”

Hinkle reddened.

Donahue poked him in the ribs, chuckled, said nothing and strode from the bar. He got his brown hat and tan camel’s hair in the foyer and went out into the windy autumn street. He had the rangy walk of a long-legged man. A block farther on he caught a taxi and it took him eastward to an opulent apartment house that rose alongside the East River.

The doorman looked like a character out of a comic opera. The lobby was austere, modernistic with many angles of bronze and recessed mirrors. The elevator was large, silent on its upward flight, and the corridor down which Donahue later walked was bathed in silence.

A maid in a black-and-white dress opened the apartment door. She looked like an octoroon and had very white teeth. He gave his name and in a moment the maid returned and let him in. She vanished down a small inner corridor and Donahue went on into a deftly lighted living-room and grinned at the large woman on the sofa. Three Poms crawled over her. She grinned back.

“Hello, handsome.”

“Hello, Bertha.”

She was Big Bertha, fifty if a day, fluffed and powdered and dressed expensively but in bad taste. She had a finger in many peculiar rackets in the city, and once had been faithful to a Milwaukee brewer until he got kittenish and ran off with a girl young enough to be his grandchild. She had known Cherry Bliss. Once she had knocked out a Filipino student who tried caveman stuff on Cherry, long ago and far away.

“You could make some woman happy, Donny,” she said.

“I make a lot.”

“Gee, you hate yourself—but I like you, fella!” She held out her hand, slapped it like a man into Donahue’s and yanked him down to the sofa beside her.

He picked up one of the Poms and bounced it into an armchair.

“Easy!” she cried.

“If I loved you, I might love your dog. Have a cigar?”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

He snipped the end off a panetela with his knife. She took the cigar, clamped it between strong teeth. He struck a match, lit her cigar, then his own.

“What about it?”

He picked up another Pom that had crawled on his lap and bounced it after the first. Big Bertha bristled.

“It’s the breed,” he said. “Why don’t you get Scotties?”

“They smell.”

She heaved out of the sofa with the third Pom under her arm. She crossed to a Queen Anne secretary, got an envelope and lumbered back to the sofa. She landed heavily, and with relief. She snapped open a lorgnette, held it to her eyes and fumbled one-handed with the envelope until she had extracted a fold of paper.

“One of my girls,” she said, “is indebted to me. Heavy. If I moved a finger, she’d go up. She’s valuable, as it is. I use her to keep a check on the places where I run my dances. By the way, I’m opening a new place. In Harlem. Dinge. What the hell, it’s business. Black hostesses and only”—she leaned towards him—“black sheiks. Here.”

She passed him the slip of paper. “That girl of mine went all over town. Women’s rooming houses, women’s hotels. She’s slick—good as a detective, only more reliable. No reflections, Donny.”

Donahue looked up from the paper, his face a little weary. “Here, huhn?”

She nodded. “Ten cents a dance for sixty seconds.”

He leaned back, chewed on a corner of his mouth. “That’s not so good. This the name she used?”

“Mary Stone.” She handed him the envelope. “The picture you lent me’s in the envelope. She give you that?”

“Sent it—when I was in the hospital.”

“How old you getting?”

“Thirty-four.”

Big Bertha puffed on her cigar. “She’s only eighteen, Donny.”

He scowled at her. “I’m not out for her!”

“Just Irish, huhn?”

He stood up. “Thanks, Bertha. What kind of place is this?”

“Not the best. Lot of Filipino trade. Pretty rough—but I keep the precinct skipper smeared well.”

He dragged at his cigar, dropped his voice, saying: “How well did you know Cherry’s husband?”

“Who—Ragtime?”

He nodded.

“I knew him long before she did. Out in Milwaukee. He used to pound the ivories in a beer garden. I used to sing. I was a lousy singer. You see, Donny, I was always a hellion—I was in trouble for the first time at thirteen. It was through Ragtime I met Cherry—a wide-eyed kid from the sticks. She didn’t know what it was all about.”

Donahue nodded slowly, reflecting. Then he said: “Ragtime’s out of stir.”

“That’s too bad.”

“He’s looking for Helen.”

Big Bertha blinked, chewed on her cigar, spurted smoke through her nostrils. “The kid, I suppose, would be a soft-hearted slob like her mother—and fall for his song and dance.”

Donahue snapped: “Like hell! He’ll never get her!” He picked up his hat. “I’ll be seeing you, Bertha. Thanks for every little thing, honeybunch.”

She sighed. “Boy, I wish I was twenty years younger!” Then she heaved up, said: “Oh, wait; I almost forgot.” She thumped into her bedroom, came out with a folded newspaper. “Pipe this, Donny.”

He went over beside her and peered at a short item in Personals.

Helen T.—Write me or call me. What has happened?—Bob.

“Of course,” said Big Bertha, “it might be Helen anybody. I know a Helen Tumulty and a Helen Torgaard. But it just caught my eye. I always read the Personals, hoping I’ve got rich relatives with diamond mines or something in Africa.”

He said: “Mind if I keep this paper?”

She said: “Go ahead,” and he shook her hand and went out.

It said: Dancing Academy in red, flickering neon letters one story above an all-night cafeteria. The entrance was at the side, with a lighted façade, a wide door. Shiny, slick, too-white or too-dark youths hung around the door. Smart-alecks. Cake-eaters. Nine out of ten on the make.

Donahue was a tall man thrusting through the group. He went up the wide staircase and into the railed-off area in front of the dance-floor. Here dozens of youths and older men hung around, watched. Pale, pimpled boys from the side alleys and small, glossy Orientals from God knows where. Rotten dancers and excellent dancers. But all the girls were hoofers.

There was a large man who leaned in the little gateway, his arms folded. He watched the dancers. Donahue tapped his shoulder and the man turned, hard and blonde and remote.

“Mary Stone on the floor tonight?”

“No.”

“Where is she?”

“Ask information, guy.”

“Don’t get funny. I just had a cigar with Big Bertha.”

“Oh.” The man grinned sheepishly, then said: “She quit. She called up this afternoon and said she was quittin’. I guess she can’t take it. These dames have to know how to take it.”

“Thanks.”

Donahue turned and went out and a small, young Filipino turned and cruised dark, brilliant eyes after him. Down in the street, on the curb, Donahue took out the envelope Bertha had given him and got a second address. He stopped a cab, got in and gave the address, settled back with the last of his cigar. He tossed the stub away when he climbed out, five minutes later. It was a dark, windy tunnel of a street with narrow, three-story brick houses fronted by high stone stoops with iron rails and gloomy vestibules. Donahue climbed one of these stoops and rang a bell marked Janitor.

In a little while a man in a bathrobe opened the door and Donahue said: “Where does Miss Stone live?”

The man’s arm went straight up. “Top. Forty-three. In the back. Way in the back.”

Donahue nodded briefly, pushed past him and went up the first staircase. It had a brown, worn runner with brass strips at the edge of each step, and the banisters were huge, old. The halls were vast, cold, neat but worn to the bone with age and repeated cleanings. The top hall was the smallest and tan doors shone with cheap, glossy paint.

He knocked on a door that had 43 in tin numbers on the center panel. He waited, hands in overcoat pockets. In a minute a small voice said:

“Who is there?”

“It’s Donahue, Helen.”

He could hear the small, muffled “Oh!”

She wore a blue skirt and a Russian blouse of white, heavy silk and she looked clean and trim and a little white-faced, frightened. She made a halting gesture.

“Won’t—won’t you come in?”

He entered the bed-sitting-room that was square, high, with dark mahogany trim and old sand-colored wallpaper. He stopped by the foot of the brass bed and heard the door close quietly behind him. Then he turned and looked at her.

“What’s the idea, Helen?”

Her lower lip trembled. She started a gesture with her hands that stopped halfway and then her hands dropped hopelessly to her sides and she went slowly, wearily across the room and sank into an old Morris chair. Quietly she began to cry—soundlessly.

Donahue said nothing at first. He scaled his hat on to the bed, unbuttoned his overcoat and stood regarding her bowed head with dark, troubled eyes. A little grimace passed across his lips. He may have pictured her on the dance-floor of that academy, at ten cents a dance.

“Thanks for the flowers,” he said. And when she made no reply, he took hold of a chair, dragged it across the worn carpet and planked it down in front of her. He sat down, sweeping back the skirt of his overcoat.

He said: “Why’d you drop out of sight?”

She shook her head. Her handkerchief hid half of her face.

He went on: “I told you I wanted you to leave the city. A busybody of a cop is looking for you. A certain newspaperman is looking for you. They want to give you a lot of publicity.” He leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Helen, you don’t know what it’s all about. Why did you go to work in that lousy dancehall?”

She looked up, startled. “How did you know?”

“Given time, I can find almost anybody.”

She looked away. “I needed money. I went job-hunting. There was nothing I could do. At school I was taught to be a lady. A lot of help that is. But I can dance. I—I needed money.”

“What was I around for?”

“I—I didn’t want to ask you. You’d got yourself into enough trouble because of me. I didn’t want it to go on. There was no reason why you should have done all you did. I thought it was best I go my own way.”

“And why’d you ditch the dance-hall?”

She covered her eyes suddenly.

He put out a big hand but did not touch her. “I’m sorry.”

But she cried out: “I couldn’t stand it. The men—all the men. Especially those Filipinos. The things they said, the proposals they made. It was an awful place. Oh, most of the girls knew how to handle them. But I didn’t. How should I have known? I know nothing—nothing. And I couldn’t bear it any longer. I couldn’t.”

He leaned back and let the emotion pass. Then he said: “Well, what now?”

She held her handkerchief to her mouth, stared hard at the floor, then raised her eyes and met Donahue’s quizzical stare. “I’ve been thinking. All day I’ve been thinking. There is one way out. Mother must have left about ten thousand. I’ll go—claim it.”

“What!”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Know what that will mean?” His eyes narrowed on her.

“Yes.”

He said: “Don’t be a fool! Here you’re Helen Thompson. You’ve been Helen Thompson for years. Not the daughter of Cherry Bliss, but Helen Thompson, with a good education, a swell chance in this world. Now you’ll chuck that, huhn? You’ll chuck all that for ten thousand dollars. You’ll go, identify yourself, claim the money and within twenty-four hours it’ll be in the papers. Headlines! Pictures! Cherry Bliss’s daughter!”

“I’m not ashamed of that.”

He said: “You’ll never live it down. I wouldn’t want you to be ashamed of it, but there’s no use broadcasting that to the world. Touch that money, Helen, and it’s dynamite. You’ll be hounded, persecuted, shamed, humiliated. You’re young—you’re a kid. Ten thousand won’t last you a lifetime. For——sake, don’t touch that money!”

“I must. I need it.”

His hand slashed the air. “You don’t need it as much as that! It won’t do you any good. What’s ten thousand dollars?” he demanded suddenly; and his right hand knotted, all but the forefinger and this he leveled at her. “The Williamson Committee is now holding its own court. The information your mother had and I finally got and turned over to the District Attorney is now the main exhibit. Through it a lot of heads are falling. If they found out you were Cherry Bliss’s daughter, they’d have you on the stand, too. It would ruin you! The sob-sisters would write columns of trash. The reporters would dog you to death. A dozen guys would be chasing you.”

Her chin was up. She looked pale and beautiful. “I can stand all that. There’s nothing else for me. I’ve lost all the friends I made, anyhow. No, they didn’t leave me. But the curse of it is that I was brought up in private schools, among wealthy girls—and now I couldn’t keep up appearances. So I may as well come out and say who I am. What does it matter?” Her eyes watered and her voice squeaked pitifully: “What does it matter now?”

He stood up. “Listen to me!” His voice hardened. “I can get you out of this. Our Agency has branches all over the country and I have some few close-mouthed friends here and there. I can get you a job—far away, say in Denver or Salt Lake or even ’Frisco. I’ll have it all arranged. You’ll go there, start over again.”

“You’re good,” she said. “You’re so awfully good…. I’m tired now. Will you go?”