"Anything I can do?"
"Yeah...if you know Mitch well enough, tell him to lay off."
I grinned into the phone. "Well now, this can be a fun afternoon."
Pat grunted and said, "I suggested you speak to him, buddy."
"Sure, buddy. The point is loud and clear. When do you want my official statement?"
"Right now if you can get the lead out."
When I hung up I gave Velda the rundown and reached for my hat. She gave me that funny quizzical look and said, "Mike..."
"Yeah?"
"Did Pat notice the color relationship of those negligees?"
"Like what?"
"Black on a blonde and green on a redhead."
"He didn't mention it."
"They aren't exactly conservative. They're show-off things to stimulate the male."
"Pat thinks the last one was a showgirl."
"The other was a schoolteacher though."
"You're thinking funny thoughts, girl," I said.
"Maybe you ought to think about it too," she told me.
Chapter 2
My reception at headquarters wasn't exactly cordial. I gave a detailed statement to a police stenographer in Pat's office, but when he got done with the routine interrogation the new assistant D.A. took it from there, trying to sweat out some angle that connected me to the case. Luckily, Pat deliberately checked out my movements and corroborated them ahead of time, getting both of us off the hook, but not without getting the eager-beaver assistant D.A. red in the face. He gave up in disgust and stamped out of the office after telling me to stay in town.
"He must have read that in a book somewhere," I told Pat.
"Don't mind him. The front office gets spooked when sensational cases hit the papers in an election year."
"Don't kid with me, Pat. It smells like they're setting you up to be the patsy if something goes sour."
"You know how they're shaking up the department. Too many of the good ones already retired out in disgust."
"Don't let those political slobs ride you."
"I'm a paid employee, buddy."
I grinned at him. "Well, I'm not, and I got a big mouth. Outside a dozen reporters are waiting for me to show and I can do a little sounding off when I get rubbed wrong."
"Knock it off."
"Hell, no trouble."
"Forget it. You get to see Mitch Temple?"
"Not yet."
"Do that much and you'll do me a favor. That's all I ask. The rest we can handle just fine right here."
"I told you before I'm not in this."
"Tell it to the boys waiting outside." He got up and waved to the door. "Let's go. Your public awaits."
Pat sweated out the interview with me, watched me stand for pictures and nodded with approval when I parried the questions. For a change I didn't have to dodge and they knew it was because my story was a straight one. A couple wanted my opinion on the kill, but I shrugged it off. So far it was only Mitch Temple who had tried to tie in the earlier murder with the redhead, so there wasn't anything from that direction. If there was a tieup, Pat would find it. Right now it was only guesswork.
When they finished with me we went down to the coffee urn and drew a couple of cups. "You did pretty well back there."
"Nothing to tell them."
"Thanks for not guessing. Maybe I have something to tell you."
"Maybe I'd just as soon not know."
"Yeah," Pat said sourly. "So far there's no definite connection with those negligees. If the first one was a suicide, it's common enough. More than half who do the dutch act go out naked or partially dressed, though damned if I know why."
"You said if, Pat."
"Our little M.E. friend pursued his hobby further than I thought. Before they carted the corpse off he took tissue samples for further study. He won't commit himself positively, but he seems satisfied that his diagnosis was correct As far as he's concerned, that first dame was poisoned, slowly and painfully."
"What can you do about it?"
"Nothing. There's no body to exhume and no way of proving those tissue samples came from the original corpse. Given a few more days and there won't be any trace of the chemical that was administered. It's deteriorated."
"And the other one?"
"A whip that left pretty definite imprints on the flesh. They match specialty items shipped from Australia for a few circus and stage acts."
"Trace the buyers?"
Pat nodded. "The regulars buy them in dozen lots. Straight people. The trouble is, the import house plants them around in all sorts of places...even to advertising them in those fetish magazines. We checked their orders and they've sold hundreds by mail alone. It would be damn near impossible to trace one back."
"That leaves her prints."
"And her pictures. The photo lab did a pretty good job of reconstructing her as she must have looked." He held out a four-by-five glossy and I scanned it closely. "Faces like that get remembered," he told me. "She was quite a beauty."
"Can I keep this?"
"Be my guest. It'll be in the paper anyway."
"Good deal. I'll call you after I see Temple."
"Think it'll do any good?"
I let out a short laugh. "I know a few things he wouldn't want to get around."
At twelve-thirty I met Mitch Temple at the Blue Ribbon Restaurant on Forty-fourth Street. He had been an old-line reporter who finally made it with a syndicated column and success seemed to have made him more cynical than ever.
I didn't have to tell him what I was there for. He had laced the facts together as soon as I had called him, and when we had a drink and put our order in he said, "How come you're the errand boy, Mike?"
"Because I might be able to squeeze harder."
He gave me a lopsided grin. "Don't hound me about that party on the yacht. You've used that twice already."
"Then how about the story you never wrote about Lucy Delacort? That house she ran..."
"How did you know about that?"
"I got friends in strange places," I told him. "Old Lucy really went for you, didn't she? In fact..."
"Okay, enough, enough. What do you want?"
"Pat says to lay off the negligee angle in those two deaths."
His face became strangely alert. "I was right," he said softly, "wasn't I?"
"Got me, Mitch. Pat doesn't want to stir in a sex angle, that's all. It gives the wrong people ideas. Give him a few days to work it out and you can do what you please. Can do?"
"That louses up a lot of legwork. I busted my tail tracking down those labels."
"How much did you get?"
Mitch shrugged. "The probable sales outlets. The clerks couldn't give me anything definite because they were hot items. You know, out-of-towners getting something sexy for the wife back home, servicemen making points with a broad, buying exotic goodies in the big city...dames trying to stir a little life into the old man with a little nylon lust."
"That's all?"
"I couldn't get a description to save my tail. Except for a couple of limp characters who took sizes they could wear themselves. Apparently they were regular customers. I could run them down all right, but I don't think it would do any good. Maybe you have an idea."
"Fresh out," I said. "Velda mentioned the color combinations, green with the redhead and black with the blonde if it means anything."
"Hell, they were the fastest selling numbers. They didn't even have a pink or a white in stock. Nobody's modest these days." Mitch leaned back in his chair. "Maybe you'd better tell Pat I'm still working on it."
"So's he."
"I'm surprised nobody else made the connection. It isn't a big one, but it's a connection."
"Probably because that schoolteacher was a suicide."