I put the light out. I was back in the graveyard working at my trade. I stood still and I said nothing. I saw nobody.
The quiet voice said, “You Peter Chambers?”
“I ain’t J. J. J. Tompkins.”
“Never mind the jokes. Turn around, and stay turned around.”
“Yes, sir.” I turned and stayed turned.
“Now reach your arm back and hand me that package.”
“You’re a little premature, pal.”
“What?”
“You’re supposed to give me the word, pal. This is a real eccentric bit, but my client is a real eccentric lady, and she’s rich enough to afford her eccentricities. You’re supposed to say a name. So, say it.”
“Abner Reed.”
“That’s the jackpot answer. Reach, and grab your prize.”
There were soft footsteps, then somebody reached, and somebody grabbed.
“Very good,” somebody said. “Now stay the way you are. Stay like that for the next five minutes.”
But I didn’t “stay the way you are” for the next five minutes. Fast count, I’d say there were two reasons for that. First, five minutes in a graveyard, in the middle of the night, after your business is finished, is like, say, five years on the French Riviera. And second, I’m blessed, or is it cursed, with a large lump of curiosity. I turned, and I didn’t turn a second too soon, because I ran right smack up against Trina’s “precise moment.” Somewhere through the faint fog there was enough light to put a glint on metal — and I dropped — as five shots poured over me, and then... nothing.
Running feet... and nothing.
I got up, but I didn’t even try going after him. The guy was gone. Go search for a needle in a haystack. You go — but at least you’ve got a chance. The needle is inanimate, and it is in the haystack. But searching for a gunman in a graveyard... no, sir. I’ll take the needle-in-the-haystack deal.
Anyway, I brushed at my clothes, and I got out of there, and I was damn glad to get out of there. My car was parked about a quarter of a mile down, and when I slammed the door behind me and pushed down the buttons, I permitted myself the luxury of a couple of real deep-down shudders, and then I turned over the motor and went away from there, fast. When the clustered lights of civilization finally rose up before me, I visited the most civilized place I could think of — a bar — where I had three quick constituents of resuscitation and a slow chaser. Then I went back to the car and my progress to Manhattan was less precipitate and more thoughtful.
2.
Names ran through my mind like tape running through a clinking cash register. Trina Greco, Johnny Hays, Nick Darrow, Florence Fleetwood Reed. I gave the first three a quick-think, so I’d have time to concentrate on the last, and then, perhaps, hash them all up together. I was relaxed now, and moving without hurry. I was heading for the Reed mansion at Gramercy Park, and it figured for about an hour.
Trina Greco. A dish for a king, and I make no pretense at royalty. I had seen her once, about six months back, dancing at the Copa (and had admired her from afar), but I’d met her at a party about two weeks ago (admiring her from very near), and had commenced a small but concentrated campaign. She had quit the night-club job (which was bread and butter) and was rehearsing now with a ballet company, for which she had been trained most of her life. I knew very little about her, but was eagerly trying to learn much more.
Johnny Hays. A good-looking kid who had been inoculated by slick-type movie heavies in his early youth. A no-brains young man who would wind up, one day, neatly dressed, but grotesquely sprawled in a gutter with a generous portion of his intestines splattered beside him. Meanwhile, he was a killer-diller with the ladies, and drew his pay within one of the varied echelons which went to make up the intricate empire of Nick Darrow.
Nick Darrow, very much more important. Brains, cunning and the conscience of a crawling lobster. Neat, young enough, and at the height of his ambition. Politically well-connected, reasonably cautious, and one of the top ten narcotics outlets in the United States. Owner of the Club Trippa, on Madison Avenue.
Florence Fleetwood Reed, completely removed from any of the others. Until late this past afternoon, unknown to me, except through legend. Cafe society, real society, and snob-rich to the tune of a hundred million dollars inherited from a five-and-dime pappy who had passed away leaving little Florence as his sole and avaricious beneficiary. Reputed to be inordinately shrewd in business, stuffily stingy, and weirdly eccentric. Young, beautiful, headstrong, imperious, commanding. Married once, a long time ago, to a movie actor, divorced, and recently, about six months ago, re-married.
Late in the afternoon, I’d had a call at the office... from Florence Fleetwood Reed. I’d been summoned to her home, and I had answered the summons. I had met her alone, at her Gramercy Park home, a firm-hipped blonde with a lot of control and hard grey eyes within an almost imperceptible network of crepe-like wrinkles. I had been informed that I had been selected as a final cog in a peculiar business transaction. I was told that I was not to ask questions, was to return at eleven o’clock, was to pick up a package, was to go to a cemetery on Long Island, find a tombstone marked J. J. J. Tompkins, wait until somebody came there who asked for me by name, and then mentioned the name Abner Reed. I was then to turn the package over to him, and return to Gramercy Park and collect my fee. Said fee, one thousand dollars. Time of appointment at said J. J. J. Tompkins’ resting place, twelve-thirty, and wait if the caller is late.
In case you haven’t heard, I’m a private detective, which is synonymous with anything confidential, including cockeyed-type messenger boy (if the fee is large enough). In my business, if the client is right, you ask no questions, you give not whit nor wisdom (unless requested); you take it, leave it and forget about it unless an acute or wildly unforeseeable incident occurs.
Gunplay in a graveyard, when your client is the esteemed Florence Fleetwood Reed, is both acute and wildly unforeseeable.
Was the gunplay, then, connected with your client, or was it mixed up with Trina, Hays and Darrow? True enough, it was a vastly populated cemetery, but just as truly you were the only one present upon whom bullets could have even the slightest effect, so, as you turned into the driveway of the Reed home, you were grimly determined to breach the canons of your profession and fling questions until a couple of appropriate answers bounced back.
3.
A sleepy-eyed maid ushered me into the downstairs living room and vanished. Uncomfortably, I waited alone, and then a door opened and Florence Fleetwood Reed strode in. And, striding behind her, in measured steps, like a couple of pallbearers — a tall silver-haired man and a tall silver-haired woman.
“All right, Mr. Chambers?”
“Yes, Mrs. Reed.”
“You made your delivery?”
“Yes, Mrs. Reed.”
She had blue eyes and blonde hair and a patrician nose with easily quivering nostrils. She was in her young thirties, thin-lipped and severe, but plenty good-looking, with a firm full figure, ramrod-straight, but a little bulgy in spots if you’re inclined to be critical. She flung a hand over a shoulder and introduced me to the pallbearers. “My uncle and my aunt. Mr. Harry Fleetwood and Mrs. Ethel Fleetwood.”
The man smiled and said, “Uncle Harry.”
The lady smiled and said, “Aunt Ethel.”
I smiled and said, “How do you do?”
The guy was about sixty, hawk-nosed and yellow-toothed, with a deep gruff voice slightly British in accent. The lady had a round smooth face and a porcelain smile and more flirtatious sparkle to her eyes than double the girls half her age.