Fran came on and sounded relieved at hearing from me. I told her that as I was leaving the bar with Chernow, we’d bumped into a couple of other men from the office. They were going to the fights at the Garden, I told her and one of them had an extra ticket, so I decided to go along. I said I hadn’t been able to get to a phone before. I hoped she wouldn’t mind.
“Of course not, darling,” Fran said. “Just don’t be too late. And have fun!”
I hung up and sat there for a moment. Yeah. Have fun. I was going to have a lot of fun.
I left the cigar store and stood out on the street in front of it. I looked down Forty-Sixth Street toward Broadway. It was a long alley of flickering neon lights. I hadn’t been in New York at night like this for years. But if I saw it every night, I think it would have affected me the same way. New York, even the Times Square area, is a business world by day. It’s speed, turmoil, excitement. But it’s in black and white. After dark the whole thing changes.
The pace doesn’t slow, but now it’s in full color and the moving neon lights heighten the effect of continual action. Reality, ugliness, is gone. You don’t notice the dirt-littered gutters, the unpainted buildings, the grimy bricks and windows. Manhattan by day is a businesswoman, crisp, efficient, an executive, stern, no time for anything but making money: a salesman, loud, swaggering, confident. By night the town’s an exciting, painted woman of the evening; a young girl out on her first New York date; an actor between performances, out on the street in costume and greasepaint.
You stand in a midtown side street at night and all your values change. The pulsing nightlife around you gets into your own bloodstream. Obligations, duties, ideals, slip away. Life is a carnival. Perspectives change. Nothing counts, suddenly, but laughing, singing, drinking, dancing. You need a pretty girl, to look at the promise in her eyes, to watch her tongue moisten her red lips, to watch her teeth shine in the saying; you want to feel that girl in your arms as the chrome-like polish and smoothness of a name band stirs the rhythm in you both; you want to get drunk, where all is beautiful, all gaiety, fast funny talk, and none of it will ever end and there will be no morning, no hangover, no regret.
In spite of what I’d been through this evening, and the jam I was still in, I felt all that, for a moment. I could imagine what it would do to some people, living in all that, going out into it night after night. Because you weren’t a part of it – and little of it was for nothing, you had to buy it – unless you had money in your pockets. Lots of money. I could imagine that this was what had happened to Ronny Chernow and perhaps Liz Tremayne, too.
But I forced all that out of my mind. I had to get this evening over with. I had to get Ronny Chernow, get that signed statement of confession back and get him arrested for all he’d done. That was a big order.
What would happen if I went straight to Chernow, now, confronted him with the whole thing? He’d laugh at me, deny it, say I was drunk. Or possibly he would kill me. Or Vivian and Smitty, his hired help would either be there, or get there after I arrived. No. That was out. I had to learn more, first, at least.
I remembered that the confession I’d been forced to sign implicated Liz Tremayne. I didn’t doubt but what she’d been in on all this with Chernow. But I could not figure his mentioning her in the confession. Monday, when the whole thing came out, she’d be on the spot, too. She certainly wouldn’t protect Chernow, then. There was only one answer to that. She’d been killed, probably, with another note and with the murder made to look like suicide, also. That would round it out nicely for Chernow. If that hadn’t happened yet, it would soon. If it hadn’t happened yet, I could save Liz’s life. Once she saw the way her partner was double-crossing her, she’d turn on him, substantiate my story. If she was still alive.
I went back into the cigar store, called Liz Tremayne. There was no answer. But I had to find out whether she was dead yet or not. Her address was on West End Avenue and I took a subway up there. It was an old, run-down apartment building, still bearing some trace of its glory days in the faded and torn canopy over the front and in the fat, whiskey-flushed doorman in his soiled uniform. There was no switchboard, but I learned from the mailboxes that Miss Elizabeth Tremayne lived in Apartment 3 M.
There had been no police cars in front of the place, no sign of excitement. I figured I’d gotten a break, that she was still alive. I rang the bell outside of her apartment. There was the click of high heels across the floor inside and the door cracked open. Then it was thrown wide. The girl who stood there didn’t look like the Liz Tremayne of Emcee Publications, Inc. Business Office. In fact, for a flashing second I didn’t even recognize her.
The hair that was always pulled into a tight, unattractive bun at the back, now flowed softly, silkily about her shoulders. It had been just washed and treated with some kind of light rinse and it looked alive and all full of shiny highlights. It was a honey color, instead of just brown.
Liz was wearing makeup, tonight. Her lips were smoothly painted and glistening. There were artfully blended touches of color at her high cheekbones. Without glasses, her eyes were beautiful. They were a flame-blue, in striking contrast to the thick, black, spiky lashes and the thin, dark, neatly formed arch of the brows above them.
She was wearing a blace lace and silk negligée, trimmed with what looked to me like pink angora. It was just held together by a belt in the front. She had everything necessary to wear something like that. What Ronny Chernow had said about her that day long ago, was true in spades. This Liz Tremayne knocked you out, all right. I couldn’t get my breath that first moment of looking at her.
“Kip!” she said. She didn’t even sound like the same girl I’d seen around the office for several years. When she’d changed her appearance she’d apparently altered her whole personality. “Kip Morgan, what are you doing here?”
I’d wanted to see what emotions registered in her eyes when she first recognized me. But it didn’t work out. I wasn’t looking at her eyes. When my gaze did finally rise to her face, she was smiling, puzzled.
“Something’s happened,” I said. “I – we’d better not talk out here.”
“Of course,” she said. “Come on in.”
She stepped aside and I moved past her, down a short hallway and into the living room. The room was large, high-ceilinged. It was furnished more like a studio than an apartment. Instead of a sofa there was a studio conch. There was no matching furniture, no upholstered chairs. There were two leather-covered lounge chairs and several straight-backed ones. There were scatter rugs on the floor and prints of good paintings decorated the blue-tinted walls. Between two enormous windows was a ceiling-high bookcase, with every other shelf decorated with knick-knacks, instead of books. I turned to Liz Tremayne.
“How well do you know Ronny Chernow?” I demanded.
She blinked. The color on her cheekbones seemed to darken. She held her hands clasped in front of her. Her voice was distant, cool, when she said: “What’s this all about? You have no right to come barging in here, uninvited, questioning me about my private life!”
“All right,” I said. I gave it to her right between the eyes. “Chernow has been embezzling Emcee Publications out of thousands of dollars for a full year. You’ve been his accomplice. I have proof, so don’t try to deny it.”
She fell back away from me as though I’d slapped her. She went deadly pale and now the spots of rouge on her cheeks stood out like red poker chips. Her hands clenched together until the knuckles stood out whitely.
“You must be insane!” she said. “Making an accusation like that! What in the world’s the matter with you, Kip? What’s made you say – or even think a thing like – embezzling funds? How?” She glanced toward the door of another room, a reflex action, but then caught it and turned her gaze quickly back to me again.