A door opened and Beaumonte came into the room. He held a slim cigar in one hand and wore a dinner jacket cut of black raw silk.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Mike,” he said, in his deep rich voice. “I’m glad you could get right over.”
Carmody said something appropriate and watched Beaumonte as he put an arm around Nancy’s waist and kissed her bare shoulder. Sometimes Beaumonte’s expression gave him away; but there was nothing to learn from it now. He seemed in good spirits but his mood could change drastically and without warning, Carmody knew.
Physically, Beaumonte was impressive, with a big well-padded body, thick gray hair and a complexion like that of a well-cared-for baby. His lips were full and red, his brown eyes clear and untroubled. He spent about a third of each day taking steam baths, sun-lamp treatments and suffering the ministrations of his barber, masseur and trainer. His manner was sensuous and complacent; he could bear nothing but silk against his skin, and fussed pretentiously with his chef on the subjects of sauces and wines. There were times when Carmody half expected him to start stroking himself or purring.
“Mike won’t drink,” Nancy said.
“Not a bad habit,” Beaumonte said, glancing at her appraisingly.
“I’m okay,” she said.
“Yeah, so far. Won’t change your mind, Mike?”
“All right, make it a mild Scotch,” Carmody said.
“I’ll have sherry, the Spanish with the crowns on the label,” Beaumonte told Nancy. He glanced at Carmody. “It’s a fine one. I have it imported especially. You have to watch sherry, Mike. It’s splendid when it’s right. But when it isn’t, I mean if it’s off even a shade, well it’s not worth drinking.”
“Sure,” Carmody said, managing to keep his annoyance from showing in his face. Beaumonte had grown up on bootleg whiskey; he had been a small-time hoodlum in the Thirties, a skinny punk in pin-striped suits and a gray fedora, which he wore pulled down all around in the style favored by Capone’s bums in Chicago. Money, carloads of it, had brought out the art lover and wine bibber.
Nancy brought their drinks on a round silver tray, and Beaumonte’s expression changed as he noticed that she had made herself another highball. “You’ve had enough,” he said. “Leave that here and go lie down.”
“Dan, don’t be dull,” she said, trying to soften his face with an impudent, gamin smile. “You’ll spoil the party.”
“You’ve had your ration for today,” he said, and now he meant business. His face and manner were unpleasant. “It’s sloshing in the scuppers. Beat it. Sleep it off.”
“All right, Dan,” she said quickly, her little pose melting under the hard anger in his eyes. “So long, Mike.”
Here was the art patron and wine sipper, Carmody thought, and the irony of it was enough to check his irritation. For some reason Beaumonte enjoyed humiliating her; and by a freak of timing the scenes always seemed to occur when he was playing the grand gentleman to the hilt. Maybe she planned it that way, Carmody thought. Beaumonte had picked her out of a chorus line six years ago, and since that time had transformed her into a lady. She had been trained to walk and talk, to manage a dinner party for thirty and to dress herself with quiet taste. Beaumonte had hired trainers and coaches for her, he had schooled her like an intelligent dog until she could perform any social trick with ease. And somewhere on the way she had started hitting the bottle. She would probably be dead in five years, Carmody knew, and he wondered if that was why Beaumonte was so rough on her. Because the investment wasn’t paying off; the bought-and-paid-for little lady had crossed him by turning into a lush. But there was something else, Carmody guessed. Beaumonte would have enjoyed humiliating a real lady, but no genuine article would take it; so he had created Nancy as a stand-in for the real thing. By hurting her he took a small revenge against a class which had always intimidated him; people whose English was correct and whose manners were casual and right.
Beaumonte sat down in a deep chair, the glass of sherry in one hand, the slim cigar in the other. He looked up at Carmody, a small frown gathering on his pampered features. “Let’s get right to it, Mike. Sit down and get comfortable.” He sipped some of the sherry and wet his full lips. Then he turned his clear brown eyes directly to Carmody. “It’s this, Mike. If your brother fingers Delaney it can cause us trouble. Because Delaney has told our lawyer that he’s going to talk, unless we take him off the hook. So your brother’s got to be sensible. You understand?” Carmody shrugged his wide shoulders and said nothing. The silence stretched out awkwardly until Beaumonte, still frowning, said, “Well, do you see it?”
“Part of it,” Carmody said. “What’s the rest of it?”
“All right, let’s start at the start,” Beaumonte said, settling in the chair and crossing his fat legs. “Delaney, who’s worked for us off and on for years, shot and killed a man named Ettonberg. That was last month. It was a stupid murder, and not tied up with us in any way. Ettonberg and Delaney had a fight about a woman and Delaney killed him after he’d been drinking so much that he couldn’t hit the ground with his hat. As you know, this happened in a boardinghouse on your brother’s beat. He went in and found Delaney standing over Ettonberg with a gun in his hand. If he’d killed the bastard right then, he’d have done us a favor. But Delaney slugged your brother and got away without being seen by anyone else. So he went to Martin’s joint where there was a poker game and fixed himself up an alibi.”
“I guess we both know the story pretty well,” Carmody said. “The cops picked up Delaney on my brother’s description. Eddie testified at the Grand Jury hearing and the D.A. got a true bill.”
“Okay, now we’re up to the present,” Beaumonte said. “When Delaney goes to trial your brother can finger him right into the chair. And that can’t happen. If it does, Delaney talks.”
What did Delaney know? Carmody wondered. “Can he hurt you by talking?” he asked.
Beaumonte looked annoyed. “Don’t talk about me being hurt. I don’t like that kind of talk.”
Carmody shrugged. “No point in not being realistic. I talk pretty damn much.”
“We’re going to save Delaney,” Beaumonte said. Carmody’s remark had brought spots of color into his cheeks, but he didn’t let his anger get him away from the subject. “So you talk to your brother, Mike?”
“What do I tell him?”
“You tell him he don’t identify Delaney at the trial.”
“Will that do any good?” Carmody said. “My brother has already testified against Delaney at the Grand Jury hearing.”
“Don’t you worry about the legal end of it,” Beaumonte said. “That’s what we pay lawyers for. And here’s the way they’ve figured it. Delaney’s attorney waived a hearing before the Magistrate the night of the murder. So your brother didn’t have to identify him then. Naturally, Delaney was held for the Grand Jury without bail. In this state defendants don’t appear at the Grand Jury hearings, so your brother didn’t confront Delaney and make an identification. He just testified that to the best of his knowledge a man named Delaney was standing over Ettonberg’s dead body when he came on the scene. That gave the D.A. his true bill. Your brother won’t confront Delaney until the trial. And that’s when he blows the case up by refusing to finger him.”
“It will look raw as hell,” Carmody said.
“To hell with how it looks,” Beaumonte said angrily. “They’ll know he’s lying but they won’t be able to prove it. The jury is what counts. And our attorneys will make them believe that your brother’s an honest cop who won’t send an innocent man to the chair just to fatten up some D.A.’s score of convictions. Delaney will beat the rap. And, by God, Mike, he’s got to beat this rap. You understand?”