“What time was that? Do you remember?”
“I don’t know. About two-thirty, three, perhaps.”
“And what did you do?”
“Nothing. Sat glued to the radio, listening. I heard, after a while, that the police were interested in talking to Gordon Phelps.”
“Any idea how you got mixed up in it?”
“I assumed that she had mentioned my real name to some of her friends, and that the police had questioned these friends.”
“So why didn’t you go down and talk to the cops?”
“Simply because I didn’t want to get mixed up in it. There’s a difference between the police wanting to talk to Gordon Phelps — a friend of Vivian Frayne’s — and the police wanting to talk to, or having talked to, Gordon Phelps, Vivian Frayne’s lover. I didn’t want that smeared over the papers. Once they talked to me — they’d get it from me. On the other hand, once this damned murder is solved — it’s over. It’s off the front pages. It’s yesterday’s news. I’d be out of it.”
“So what did you do?”
“I wired my lawyer and had him come here. I had him go to the police and tell them that I was out of town on business, and that I was due back in a couple of weeks. I told him that he was to tell them that he didn’t know where I went, just out of town on business, back in a couple of weeks.”
“And then what’d you do?”
“Called your office, but you weren’t in. So I wired Sophia to get to you.”
“Why Sophia? Why not the lawyer?”
“Because, finally, I’m getting smart. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Lawyer, himself, might get suspicious when I’m cooking on all burners. Sophia, basically, is a friend. I’m a rich man. She knows that. Her very avariciousness keeps her being a friend.”
“Very clever,” I said. “Very psychological and all that. And now what do you do? Hide here until the thing blows over?”
“Or blows up.”
“Okay,” I said. I went to the door. “I’ve got your money and I’ve got your story. Let’s see what happens from here on out.”
“Please make it happen quickly,” he said. “And keep me informed.”
“Which necessitates my coming back here, doesn’t it?”
“How else?” he said.
“So let’s do it real whodunit, why don’t we? As long as you’re paying for my kind of brains, let’s do it with a system. Let’s make it five short rings, a pause, and then one long ring. When you hear that ring, you’ll be sure it’s me, you’ll know it’s Prometheus bringing fire to man.”
“Quite the card, aren’t you, Prometheus. But that ringing idea is a good idea, really. Hadn’t thought of it at all.”
There was a good deal, it appeared, that Mr. Gordon Phelps had not thought of.
3
Mr. Gordon Phelps had not thought, for instance, of the possibility that a lady named Sophia Sierra might be attracted to a member of homo sapiens, gender male, without such member depositing a bag of loot at her feet like a sacrifice at an altar. He had not thought of the possibility that Sophia Sierra might be attracted to an individual half his age without such individual having to barter for her affections like they were jewels for sale in a forbidden marketplace. Gordon Phelps had not thought, for instance, that he had absolutely no alibi: the fact that he was alone in his hideaway apartment during the time of the murder of Vivian Frayne was exactly that — no alibi. He had not thought of the fact that he was a prime suspect, adorned, like a harpooned whale, by three deadly shafts, and all of them sticking out of him: motive, opportunity, proximity. He had not thought of the fact that, even if innocent, he was withholding information necessary and pertinent to police investigation of a capital crime. He had not thought of the fact that, no matter what his lawyer had told the police, they were, right now, in all probability, making every effort to seek him out and take him in. He had not thought of the fact that perhaps the police had thought of the fact that the lawyer was transporting a load of fertilizer shipped direct by the client. He had not thought of the fact that, perhaps, Sophia Sierra—
I stopped it right there.
Once it was back to Sophia Sierra — I stopped it.
I flailed fingers at a cab and had a ride through the morass of New York traffic to the precinct station wherein were housed the minions of the law in charge of Homicide in that section of Manhattan. There, too, was housed the brain and bulk of one Detective-lieutenant Louis Parker, staunchest of the minions of the law: cop, friend, gentleman, human being. And there was informed, after prodding lesser minions, that the good Parker was on the “crazy shift,” the middle one of the three eight-hour tricks, that he was out, and that he had called in and was expected back in his office some time at about eleven o’clock.
That gave me time.
It gave me time to go to a fine restaurant and have a leisurely lonely supper. It gave me time to go home and divest myself of my clothes and put away a five thousand dollar fee. It gave me time to get into a warm tub and digest the supper and digest the facts I had about the murder of a dance hall lady named Vivian Frayne. It gave me time to think about Gordon Phelps (having his own kind of fun as George Phillips), and Vivian Frayne (having fun too until the fun stopped all of a sudden), and Sophia Sierra (and Phelps’ admonishment that she was as mercenary as an ancient Hessian), and Steve Pedi (who owned the dance hall), and the Nirvana Ballroom (which was the dance hall that Steve Pedi owned). Nirvana Ballroom. I knew where it was. On Broadway at Fifty-fifth Street. Nirvana Ballroom: perhaps the very name was a tip-off to Steve Pedi. It certainly was an imaginative name. Only someone with a weird imagination could have named it. Nirvana Ballroom. Nirvana. Nirvana, an expression contained in Buddhism, a religion that taught that pain and suffering is a part of life, and that the extinction of all desire and passion is the entrance into Nirvana: the attainment of perfect beatitude. I thought, as I climbed out of my warm tub, that to some of us Nirvana can signify the beginning of true life, but to others, Nirvana can also mean death.
At ten o’clock in the evening — fresh, clean, unsullied and unphilosophical — I presented myself at the Nirvana Ballroom.
Mr. Steve Pedi was running an enterprising joint. You paid an admission of a dollar and a half, trudged up a flight of stairs, passed through an arched doorway and entered upon a crowded blue dimness. There were at least three hundred couples on the floor, swaying in various embraces to swoosh-soft music wafted from an excellent orchestra on a podium to the right. I had to squint to get accustomed to the gloom of the manufactured lovers’ twilight. To my left, there was a carpeted stairway, going up. In front of me was a wooden barrier with swinging-gate breaks for entrance to the dance-floor proper. Against the inner section of the barrier lounged shapely young ladies in enticing attitudes, smiling invitingly at each new customer as he entered. The customers smiled back or gaped in embarrassment at the ladies, all of them encased in shimmering evening gowns. I moved along the barrier looking for Sophia and could not find her. I found a roped-off section, in an area even dimmer than the rest of the place, that contained chairs and tables and huddled couples. I also found a bar.
I went to the bar.
“Scotch and water,” I said.
“Sorry, no hard stuff,” the bartender said. “Against the law. We got coffee, raisin cake, all kinds of soft drinks, soda, and ice cubes if you need them. This the first time you been here, Mac?”