“Go ahead,” said Esbenshade.
“A man named Doniger thinks himself quite a lad with the girls. He made passes at Marjorie.”
“You’re not making much out of Marjorie,” Esbenshade said morosely.
“Do you want the truth?”
“I want the man who killed Marjorie.”
“Then you’ve got to have the truth.” Johnny picked up the newspaper from the bed. “You know about the Mariota Company going into bankruptcy?”
“Yes.”
“There’s a Des Moines Shellac Company listed as a creditor.”
“I’m the Des Moines Shellac Company.”
Johnny nodded quietly. “I thought you might be. You put the squeeze on them?”
“There’s a man named Dorcas in that company,” said Esbenshade. “He runs their plant. He was out to see me. Wanted to buy a lot of shellac. Naturally, we looked up the company. I didn’t like their financial statement too well.”
“But you sold them the shellac?”
“Dorcas showed me a copy of a contract they had just made with Con Carson, the crooner. He said they were going to make a recording that would sell a million records. I gave them the shellac.”
Johnny looked down at the newspaper. “The Mariota Company gave Marjorie an audition.” He looked up suddenly and met Esbenshade’s eye. “It’s pretty hard for a girl to get an audition with a phonograph record company... especially a girl that the company knows only as a secretary.”
“Yes,” said Esbenshade.
“I guess that’s why you really sold them the shellac.”
Esbenshade hesitated and then took out two more hundred dollar bills. But he closed the wallet and put it into his pocket. “All right,” he said, “you’ve got a job.”
“I ought to have a thousand dollars,” Johnny complained.
Esbenshade snorted. “I’ve given you three hundred. There’ll be another thousand when you hand me the murderer.”
“How much are you paying Todd?”
“Do you want this money, or don’t you?”
Johnny stowed it away in his pocket. “I’ll get in touch with you at the Barbizon-Waldorf.”
“How’d you know where I was staying?”
Johnny smiled. “We’ll walk out with you, Mr. Esbenshade.”
The three left the room together. Outside, Esbenshade got into a taxi, while Johnny and Sam turned left to head for Times Square.
Sam said: “So the guy really fixed it for Marjorie to get her audition — and she didn’t even know about it.”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“Yeah, but how did you know about it?”
“I didn’t. I guessed. A lucky guess.”
“All right, now guess the murderer.”
“Guesswork’s no good for that. I’ve got to have proof.”
“Yeah, well, where we going now?”
“Newark.”
Chapter Fourteen
The plant of the Mariota Record Company was a sprawling, four-story brick building that had seen better days. It was a silent building. When there’s no money in the main offices over in Manhattan the machinery in the plants in Newark, Jersey City, Brooklyn, stops turning.
There was a little office in a corner of the first floor of the Mariota Record Company. A stout woman with hennaed hair sat at a desk, working a crossword puzzle.
“What’s a four-letter word meaning chicken?” she asked as Johnny and Sam came up.
“Gump,” said Johnny.
“Gump? I never heard of such a word.”
“That’s because you’ve never raised gumps... Quiet around here, isn’t it?”
“If you’re selling something — yes, we’re not doing much these days. In fact, we’re not doing anything, as of this morning.”
“Because of a five-letter word meaning kaput?”
“Oh, you read the newspapers, do you?” Johnny grinned. “I’m looking for Joe Dorcas.”
“With a summons?”
Johnny held up both hands, palms out, so she could see they were empty. “No summons.”
“Well, he’s somewhere in the plant, but I don’t think he’ll be in a talkative mood this morning.”
“I’ll talk for both of us.”
“Since I’m probably not< getting paid for today anyway, I don’t see what point there would be in my stopping you from going into the plant...”
“Thank you, miss.”
Johnny led the way into the plant. The first floor was taken over by a number of huge mixing vats, boxes, barrels, cartons and supplies necessary to a phonograph record company. There wasn’t a soul on the floor.
They climbed a flight of stairs to the second floor. Here, there were rows and rows of strange machines and pungent, tangy odor of shellac. A man was wandering forlornly among the machines. He saw Johnny and Sam at a distance.
“Here you, fellows, what are you doing here?” he called. Then, still fifty feet away, he recognized Johnny. “What the hell do you want?”
“Why, I thought I’d drop in and say how sorry I was.”
Joe Dorcas came up and scowled at Johnny. “Do you go around every day to companies that go into bankruptcy and tell them you’re sorry?”
“No,” said Johnny. “But I was talking to my friend Doug Esbenshade this morning—”
Dorcas’ face twisted. “That dirty—!”
“Is that a way to talk about the man who sold you all that nice shellac?” Johnny asked chidingly.
“Sure, he sold us shellac — and he threw us into bankruptcy, too.”
“It takes three creditors to do that.”
“He lined up two besides himself. This company’s as sound as it ever was. Our accounts receivable and physical assets amount to more than our debts.”
“Well, maybe the receiver will bring you through.”
“Receiver!” snarled Dorcas. “A receivership is a political plum. A judge appoints a relative as a receiver and the receiver bleeds the business.” He swore luridly. “One good receivership and a receiver is fixed for life. When he gets through with this company, you can carry off what’s left in your vest pocket. And all because of your friend Esbenshade!”
“Esbenshade didn’t ask much, did he? An audition for his girl...”
“I gave it to her, didn’t I? I even made a record. It was that skinny punk, Armstrong, killed it, over in the main office. He said she sang like a hungry cat with fleas.”
“Her voice couldn’t have been that bad.”
“It wasn’t bad at all. With any effort, we could have sold ten thousand platters and even made a few bucks on the deal. But no, those wise guys couldn’t see it. We only handle artists, they said. Well, they can handle artists now.” He picked up a black lump of some substance and threw it to the floor.
Johnny stooped and picked up the black stuff. “What’s this?” The lump was a flattened piece of plastic, about an inch thick and two or two and a half inches in diameter. It weighed several ounces.
“That’s a record — in the rough. We call it a biscuit.”
“And that becomes a shiny phonograph record?”
“Why not? It’s heated and put in one of these pressing machines. See — the master record is pressed down on it, like this...” He brought down the hinge of a pressing machine.
“You mean each individual record is pressed out like that? That seems like a rather slow operation. Takes you a long time to press out a hundred thousand records.”
“Not as long as you’d think. One man can press a thousand records in a day and we’ve got two dozen of these machines.”
“Two dozen? But if you’ve only got one master record...”
“Who said anything about one master record? We make as many masters as we want.”