He stepped into a sunken living-room, with an ankle-deep rug underfoot and low-slung furniture artfully scattered about. He admired the racing prints, golfing cups inscribed with the name of George T. Fehlman, the aquarium brilliant with flashing tropical fish.
Doranne didn’t keep him waiting long.
“Marshal!”
“You’re looking better than ever,” — he let her see he admired the well-filled tweedy suit, the wind-blown russet hairdo — “which is saying something.”
“How did you find me?” She motioned the maid to go away.
“Yours isn’t the kind of light it’s easy to hide under a bushel, Doranne. All I had to do was ask Actor’s Equity where I could locate the best-looking stripper in the business. When I told them she was a redhead, or had been, used to work for Slansky back in Forty-seven, and had a figure that made General Sherman get down off his iron horse at the Plaza one night, they agreed I must mean Lily Lacazette. Nice tag, too.”
She gave him a tense little smile. “I only use it for professional purposes. I... I’m Mrs. Fehlman, I mean, really I am.”
“Sure.” He knew her when she’d been Mrs. Theodore Wilter, too, but probably that hadn’t been ‘really.’ “Does your husband know about Ted?”
“Oh, no! No!” She pressed one hand to her side. “He doesn’t... he... well, he just mustn’t!”
“That’s all right.” Pedley made a soothing gesture. “He won’t learn anything from me. But Ted’s out. I thought you ought to know.”
“Have you — did you see him?”
“Yair. He hasn’t changed much. I don’t think he learned anything. I doubt if he’s forgotten anything.”
She stared. “I knew he never would. Do you think he’ll—?”
“No telling with a cobra like that.” He watched her move toward the decanter on the crystal coffee table. “I’ll have the precinct put a man on watch here, if you’re afraid.”
“I’m scared, all right.” She lifted the cut glass stopper. “But that wouldn’t help. Will you have one for auld lang syne? It’s brandy.”
“A shortie, to wish you luck in your new setup.”
“Luck won’t help. If Ted’s made up his mind to do anything ugly — nothing’ll stop him.” She brought glasses and ice from the credenza which turned out to be a portable bar. “You know it’s funny; he never could stick to anything worthwhile. A new job, one month and he’d give it up. But if it was something evil — why, nothing could make him give it up.”
“He’s twenty-nine now, but he’s never gotten over being a punk. Somebody sold him the idea you didn’t need brains to hold down an honest job, but that only the real wise-os could get away with being crooked.”
“Yes. That’s Ted, exactly. I — it seems hideous, now, to admit I was so absolutely mad about him.” She lifted her glass to touch his. “Maybe that’s a confession that there’s something wrong with me.”
He grinned. “I’d like to meet the man who’d say so. No. You’re tops in my book. You had the guts to play it right when you were in a tough spot. I hope you never get backed into a corner like that again.”
The chimes played Hail, Hail.
The maid whisked short skirts to the door. The man who breezed in was large, blonde, and winter-tanned.
“Georgie!” Doranne flew to him. His arms caught her in a grizzly embrace, lifted her off the floor, while wary eyes went to Pedley’s face.
Set down again, Doranne drew her husband to the marshal. “My very, very good friend, Georgie! Isn’t he somep’n, Marshal! I know you’ll really like each other!”
Pedley found a ready explanation. “Knew your wife backstage, Mister Fehlman, when I was on the Bureau of Fire Prevention. Thought maybe I could get her to do a benefit for the Fireman’s Benevolent.”
Doranne beamed her gratitude.
George expanded with pride and enthusiasm. “Guess you were the fella they told me about at the box-office this morning.”
Pedley said offhandedly, “What was that?”
George slid an arm around Doranne’s slender waist. “I guess they meant you, all right. You wanted to leave some message in Lily’s dressing room. They should’ve taken it and put it in there where she’d get it, instead of telling you to come back when the stage door was unlocked at one. But you know those front-of-the-house cheese-brains; you give ’em a rule, they got to throw their weight around at just th’ wrong time.”
Pedley avoided Doranne’s eyes. “No harm done. Worked out okay. Glad to see the swell place you and Lily have, anyway. I’d have missed that, if I hadn’t come on up here.”
But after the invitations to return had been warmly extended and vaguely accepted and he was on his way downtown in the red sedan, he wondered what show Doranne might be in.
Chapter Two
The Panic Locks
Sleet rattled against the windows of the Municipal Building all the next afternoon, glazing the sill behind Pedley’s swivel chair in the chief’s office, silvering the trees in City Hall Park far below. In the Plaza, cars crawled with ant-like slowness over the treacherous pavement, toward the bridge.
There were worse things, he mused, than being on his old job at the rear tiller on Hook and Ladder 14 on a skiddy day like this. One of them was sweating it out until zero hour, sometime between eight-thirty when the Belfonte opened its doors, and eleven, when they rang down the final curtain on Bedtime Story.
He studied the ticket which had been delivered by Western Union messenger half an hour ago — G-18. In the middle of the tenth row. Just about the toughest seat in the theatre to get out of in a hurry, if he had to.
It wouldn’t have been Doranne, though somebody expected him to draw that conclusion; Lily Lacazett’s Love Bird Twoette was featured on the Belfonte door-boards as “The Hottest Number in Town.” But she’d have known a fire marshal wouldn’t need any ducat to get inside the theatre, S.R.O. sign or not.
The phone. His office assistant, Barney Malloy: “It’s comin’ in kind of piecemeal, skipper, but maybe you put ’em together, they add up.”
“Oke. Pitch.”
“Well, first, Ed picks him up when he gets off the train yesty ay-em. Wilter subways up to Seventy-second an’ Broadway, ties on a few in a crumb-bum bar across the square an’ lugs his bag to a broken-down roomin’ house called the Rameses on Seventy-fourth near Amsterdam.”
“He knows the district. Used to live right around the corner. And—”
“About noon he goes over to the precinct, checks in with his parole officer, says he has a job lined up. With Eureka Plumbing, Ventilating, and Heating Service, Forty-seventh, near Ninth.”
“He’s just the type to be monkeying around with heating devices. So—”
“Ed tails him to an Army-Navy where he lays out for one of those ground-crew coveralls and a couple work shirts. Then over to Eureka. Ed loses him there. Wilter must of gone out the shipping room onto one of the trucks.” Of all the dumb deputies, Pedley thought. “What in hell’d Ed expect the guy to do? Come out tooting a trombone to draw attention to himself?”
“He does somep’n pretty near as screwy, Ed says. After he loses Wilter at Eureka, he goes back up to the Rameses, picks him up there around half-pas’ six. Wilter grabs a hack, then for one solid hour he cabs around like crazy, goin’ strickly nowhere. In and out. Across town. Back again. Only place he stops is that all-night drugstore on Fiftieth; he’s only in there a couple minutes so Ed don’t know what he bought.”