“Tell me straight, Steve, do you think, they’ll knock them off?” My throat is getting very tight, and I’m fighting back a crybaby bit.
“Straight, Chick, I really don’t know. If it was Siepi’s boys, I don’t think so. Hoods don’t usually kill kids. They’d probably just hold them until their hit man gets out of the country. But if it was someone else, one of the people being blackmailed, you can’t tell. But take it easy. You sound shaky. Jaffee has every available man on the street. He’s set up a command post at the 19th Precinct, so you know where not to show up.”
I hung up, went back to my table, and near got sick looking at the steak and eggs. Ling had gone out and bought the bulldog edition of the News, which had pictures of the kids. I have the same ones on my dresser. Ling is reading the recap, but I am hardly paying attention. Then a sentence hits me and I ask Ling for a repeat.
“Police are asking anyone who saw a person carrying an ostrich-skin brief case in the vicinity of the Union Square station of the IRT around 8:45 Friday morning to come forward.”
Now that strikes me as funny. That’s the hazard of being a comic. You see and hear the oddball things in life. The sight of a guy who has just murdered someone in a crowd walking around with his victim’s brief case — in ostrich yet — is just inviting attention, Yet, if he took the blackmail dope out of the case, he would surely dump the case, wouldn’t he? Anywhere, just to get rid of it. Now, in little old New York, an expensive brief case left sitting somewhere does not go homeless for long. In fact, out at Kennedy, it is the basis for an entire industry.
I don’t know what Jaffee is thinking right now, but that brief case intrigues me. If he has a command post, I can have one too, so I go into action. First, I tell Ling to call Mario Puccini, who runs a small limousine service out of 76th Street. When he shows up, I give him a sack of money and tell him to start hitting the hack stands and hangouts like the Belmore at 23rd and Lex and Kaye’s at 78th and Lex. There are more cabs in New York than patrol cars, so right away I’m ahead of Jaffee on surveillance. Since the kids’ pictures are in the News and cabbies wouldn’t be caught dead without a copy, they knew what faces to look for.
Now I have to find out where Siepi’s boys have dived for the mattresses. Jaffee, I know, is pulling in every stoolie in town, but he’s kidding himself. No stoolie is going to sing a medley that ends up with “Old Man River.” Okay, I’ve got an angle. Ziggy Klein fronts the five-man combo that plays my joint on weekends. If you want to find out what’s going on under the scalp of New York, get a bunch of musicians together and have them ask questions. They’re into the scene. Ziggy and his boys get busy with their contacts.
I get these pots simmering and reach for another. Who was on Sally Bond’s Hit Parade of Secret Sins? Ten years ago this would have been an easier task. But since the unions have decided there were too many newspapers in New York and buried all but two, there aren’t too many gossip scribes around with that kind of info. So I turn to Tish Loman, whom I don’t particularly like, but she digs me and I’m kind of a rat with women. Tish tosses parties for a living. Yes, folks, there are people so anxious to get into society that they hire people to throw a party for them. Tish knows every celebrity in the city and all the dirt besides. However, I do not feel like being charming at the moment, so I send Barry Kantrowitz to her place as my emissary. I have other fish to fry.
On my way up to 86th Street I ask the driver if he’s on my payroll and he says he is. He also gives me his theory of the whole affair. If there are 2000 hacks on the street, there have got to be 3000 different theories. It is an occupational disease with these guys.
I was surprised, but relieved, to find that Jaffee had not planted one of his boys outside the Corbetts’ apartment door.
The guy who answered the buzzer was a tall good-looking kid who told me that his sister, Mrs. Corbett, could not be disturbed. The death of her husband had floored her and the doctor had her under sedation. He was about to give me the heave-ho when I told him who I was.
“Chick Kelly. The comedian! Well, how are you? I’m in the business myself in a way. I’m a drama student at Columbia.”
He said his name was Ted Saunders and that he lived with his sister and brother-in-law when school wasn’t in session, which it wasn’t. Come to think of it, the McQuade kids were on vacation, too.
Saunders invites me in and I can tell he is trying to build a show-business contact. I should have told him that I had to open my own club to keep doing my act, but why spoil it? I needed information. Saunders is full of information because he has already done the audition for the police.
It seems his brother-in-law left the apartment around 11:30 p.m. on Wednesday to go to Kennedy Airport and didn’t get back until about 3:00 a.m., then went straight to his den where he stayed until 5:00 or 5:30 a.m. He got some sleep and left for court around 8:45.
“Yes,” Saunders said, “the brief case was unique. My sister had it made in Mexico last year. Miles was very proud of—”
He stopped short when a woman in a wrapper walked into the living room. She was probably a stunner under normal conditions, but right now she looked like hell.
“More police questions?” she asked with a weary kind of exasperation.
“No, Stella, Mr. Kelly isn’t from the police. He’s Chick Kelly — you know, the comedian. Mr. Kelly, my sister, Mrs. Corbett.”
“Oh, Lord, what next? Police, Chinese orphans, and now a comedian! Are you a friend of Ted’s, Mr. Kelly?”
I didn’t get a chance to answer because Saunders had already shot a question.
“Chinese orphans? Stella, maybe you should cut back on that sedative, honey. You sound a little delirious.”
“Ted, stop treating me like a child. There were two Chinese orphans here when you were out this afternoon. Collecting for war orphans. I gave them a dollar just to get rid of them.”
The conversation went on between brother and sister and I know it’s time to do a dissolve. I fast-talk my way out of there with a story about knowing the late Mr. Corbett and dropping by to pay my respects.
It took three tries before I found a phone that worked, which is a remarkable feat in itself, the odds usually being five to one. I plunk in a dime and when Lila’s voice comes on, I tell her to shut up and listen.
“Last Halloween the kids went to that school dance as Chinese, didn’t they?” She gives me a yes and I tell her to check the closets. Lila is confused but obedient, and when she comes back with the news that the costumes are missing, I shout hallelujah and tell her that her children are no more kidnaped than I am and that when we turn them up I want first licks.
Back at the club, things are really humming. The cabbies haven’t turned up anything, but Ziggy’s boys are firing on all sixes. Siepi’s boys have holed up in a private house on Staten Island. That’s a trade card for my eventual confrontation with Jaffee. I also put out the word to the cabbies that we are no longer looking for the charming McQuade tots, but to keep the brights on for Lum Foo and his panhandling sister.
I was beginning to think that Barry Kantrowitz had eloped with Tish Loman, but he turns up finally, and has he got some nuggets. Now I’m ready for Jaffee and I’m enjoying myself immensely. Of course, my original concern was to find the kids, but now I had Jaffee to show up. Maybe it’s my nature to be an SOB, maybe not. But Jaffee had worked me over once, and I wanted to get even. As Rodney Dangerfield, a fellow comic, says, “I don’t get no respect,” and I wanted some respect from that hard-nosed Lieutenant.