The living room was filled with old furniture and cluttered to the point where you knew she didn’t care much for housework, or for a lot of servants getting in her way. She cleared away enough magazines from the sofa so I could sit down.
“My name is Steven Hilliard,” I said. “I represent Mr. Maximillian Bemelmens. There is a job of sculpting he wishes you to do. But it must be done immediately. You’ll work in his penthouse. Anything you need will be supplied.”
“Well, really, I—”
“You can check Mr. Bemelmens in Dun and Bradstreet. He wants only the best, but there can be no delay whatever. A certain young lady will have to take a trip shortly, and Mr. Bemelmens wants—”
“A keepsake? A reminder?”
“You could put it that way.”
“A bust?”
“Just — the head. But you’ll have to go see Mr. Bemelmens now. He instructed me to offer fifteen thousand.” I wondered why I’d quoted that top figure right off the bat.
Those eyes of hers expressed pleased surprise. She gave me a careful scrutiny, seemed to decide that I was not too long out of college, one of those young men in a solid business firm who wore a Windsor knot in his tie. It was evident she didn’t read the papers too much or she’d have known a little something about Maxie.
“I’ll shuck out of this smock,” she said.
I relaxed. I had thought I would have more trouble. I watched her leave the room. The smock couldn’t quite hide the rhythm of her hips as she walked.
When we got back to the apartment hotel she didn’t notice the guards scattered through the building. I wouldn’t have noticed them myself if I hadn’t known where to look. We rode the elevator up to the penthouse.
Myart was over at the cabinet that unfolded into a bar, gesturing and mumbling at Dominick and Todd when I ushered Cecil Calhoun in. I wondered what Dominick and Todd had found out.
Myart spun at the sound of our entry. His narrow eyes pulled together, and I said, “Cecil Calhoun.”
He looked as if he didn’t much like the idea of a girl, but he said, “Maxie’s waiting.”
I crimped my lips tight on a breath and steered Cecil into the room where Maxie sat. She looked at him and at the thing on the couch and turned back toward the door fast. She looked a little green. She said, “You’ll pardon me.”
I caught her wrists, my back against the door. Her gaze flashed up into mine. I could feel the warmth of her, the lithe strength of her body. I wondered how expressive those eyes would get in soft darkness alone with some guy she thought a lot of.
“I really am in no serious need of fifteen thousand dollars,” she said. “Now if you’ll excuse me...”
“Sit down!” Maxie said.
She gave me an angry look and sat down.
“Can you sculpt a head from photographs,” Maxie asked.
“I suppose, with enough shots from enough angles.”
“You’ll have enough. I’ve got dozens of them, from all angles.” For an instant Maxie’s sour, dead gaze lingered on the thing on the couch. “I won’t bury her like that,” he said. “She’s got to have a head. You make a head of wax and I’ll pay you fifteen thousand and then you’ll be free to leave.”
She looked about the room as if seeking a way out. “I suppose this is one job any sculptor would never forget,” she said at last, squeezing a wry smile across her lips.
“Give her the rumpus room,” Maxie said. “Get it cleared. Bring in whatever she wants.”
I steered Cecil into the rumpus room. She saw me looking at the darts in the large cork board on the wall. She said, “You don’t think I’m a fool, do you? What good would a few darts do?”
“I’ll send the photographs in. Make out a list of things you’ll need.”
She dropped in a modernistic leather chair. “It’s driven him crazy, hasn’t it, that thing in there?”
“It hit him very hard,” I admitted. “When you think of Maxie you think of a guy with steel in his guts, slapping backs, laughing, taking what he wants. When he opened that trunk that she came in, it aged him a thousand years. He’s sitting in there like an old, numbed man.”
“More like a plotting, insane spider,” Cecil suggested. “She must have been quite a gal.”
“Honey, I wouldn’t even attempt to describe Melissa.”
“She was beautiful?”
“More than just that. Not the intellectual type. I guess the animal type would fit her. She was catty, mean, vicious. She’d fly into a rage and throw things. She’d pout. She’d sell you out without batting an eye, see your soul in hell, and suffer acute self-pity if you even suggested she had anything to do with it.”
“Some fools go for that type,” Cecil conceded.
“Not me.”
“What’s your type?”
“You.”
“That’s flattering, considering the source. You must have had a lot of experience with women.”
“Not so much so as you’d think.”
“This Melissa — where’d she come from?”
“I don’t know, before she came to the city. But she cut a wide swath here. First she married a cheap little bookie. He made the mistake of introducing her to Augie Feldman, who was the biggest bookie in town. After Augie there was a millionaire playboy, an aviator who got famous during the war, and then Roy Meek, who dealt in narcotics. None of them ever stopped loving her.”
“She didn’t marry them all?”
“No.” I laughed at the expression on Calhoun’s face. “Only one or two of them.”
“After this Roy Meek came your boss?”
“Look, why all the questions?”
“Just interested — and if I’m going to do a head of her I have to know what she was like. There must be some character in the head, mustn’t there?”
“Well, after Roy Meek came the boss,” I said.
“And what happened to the men who loved her? I mean, she must have left her mark on their lives.”
“The millionaire ruined Augie Feldman,” I said. “Then the millionaire took to drink when she was through with him. The aviator cracked up — it might have been suicide. Roy Meek landed in prison.”
She cut me a look out of the corners of her eyes. “Your boss’ doing?”
“You’d better not ask any more questions,” I said. “I’ll get those photos. You’d better list the things you want.”
When I went out Myart was talking excitedly with Fisk. A tall, lean, grey man, Fisk was mopping his face. They turned as I entered the sunken living room.
Myart said, “Roy Meek is out.”
I drew up on my toes, remembering. The day Meek had gone to prison. The poisonous hatred Maxie Bemelmens and Roy Meek felt for each other. I could still seem to see Maxie standing in the courtroom, laughing, Melissa on his arm, when sentence had been passed on Meek. Meek had turned and his eyes had sought Maxie and Melissa out and he had given them a look. That’s all, just one long look out of those washed-out cold blue eyes.
“When?” I asked.
“Two days ago. A parole.”
“I’ve been on it all day,” Fisk said. “I finally found the rooming house where he checked in when he hit town. But after that first night he hasn’t been back there.”
“Get back on it,” Myart said. “I’ll send Oldham over to help you.”
When Fisk went out, Myart paced briskly back and forth, stopped before me, rocking on his toes, hands clasped behind him. In the tone of a man delivering a lecture, Myart said, “The ramifications of this thing can be far reaching and charged with disaster, Hilliard. No one outside the organization must know Maxie’s real condition. This, Hilliard, is all the work of someone gone mad with hatred for Melissa and Maxie. I doubt that Roy Meek would have the cold nerve to do it.
“But most important — to me — is the organization. The work must go on. Maxie is expending a hundred dollars an hour, bending every effort of our team to track down Melissa’s killer. Dozens of people have been questioned, watched, traced. We’ve examined her movements in detail until one-twenty-five this morning. There we have hit a dead end, a blank wall.