Murder Makes Me Mad Read online

  Murder Makes Me Mad

  Ferguson Findley

  CHAPTER 1

  I swallowed the anchor and came ashore in 1954, and since then I’ve been cruising alone in a two-compartment-galley-and-head lash-up in that part of New York City they call Peter Cooper Village. It’s a pretty snug harbor. It’s tidy and shipshape, and that’s for me.

  If you can’t understand exactly what I mean it’s because I still talk sailor talk, and probably always will. What I mean to say is that I gave up going to sea and came onto dry land in 1954. Since then I’ve been living alone in a two-room, kitchen and bath apartment in Peter Cooper Village, which is a section of New York City. “Tidy and shipshape” means tidy and shipshape.

  The treasures I’ve collected during twenty-four years in the United States Navy, in every kind of ship from the old four-stacked destroyers to the big battlewagons and the carriers, are crammed into that apartment. It’s full of a sailor’s memories, which is what a sailor has more of than almost anybody, I guess.

  There’s the picture of me in recruit training camp in 1930, for instance—eighteen years old and looking about twelve in my first dress blues and flat hat. I was too old to cry and not old enough to shave every day. I sure was a country boy back in 1930. From Conway, Arkansas, to be exact. It’s a wonder I lived, the way I looked then. I’d never even seen salt water.

  On another wall there’s a picture of me and the gang from the first division on the old Black Hawk, when I was a coxswain, or what they call a third class boatswain’s mate under the system they have now. That was out in the old Asiatic Squadron, which was the best duty in all the world, we thought. We hung around Manila and Cavite and went up to China in the springtime, and we sang “We won’t go back to Subic anymore.”

  That long skinny flag is the commissioning pennant from the Daley. The first commissioning pennant usually goes to the skipper who puts the ship in commission, when she’s brand new. We gave it to Captain Frey, as usual, and he gave it to me, privately and in his cabin, about a month after that. Only a few of us know why I have it—the captain and the quartermaster of the watch and the guy I knocked down when he froze on the wheel in a tight maneuver.

  On the table there is the gold cup I won with the light-heavyweight championship of the Pacific Fleet in 1938. I weighed a hundred and seventy pounds then, ten pounds less than I do now.

  The picture of the red-faced guy standing in front of an admiral is me. The admiral is Halsey. Some combat artist we had with us off the Philippine Sea painted it when the admiral gave me my Navy Cross for helping out around an ammunition fire. My face turned red the first week I went to sea and has been that color ever since.

  So that’s what the room looks like when you come in. Actually, you might say it looks like something that has come through a bad destroyer crossing of the North Atlantic. But I like it.

  On the particular afternoon in the middle of June when this story begins, there was a lot of bright sunshine streaming in the living room window as I opened the door. It brought out the dust on the table top, and I ran my hand over it and tried to clean it off, but what I needed was a swab. It really wasn’t that dirty, I’m just fussy. I opened the window, and the city air was cool and clean after the rain that had washed it during the forenoon watch. (That’s between eight and twelve o’clock in the morning.)

  One of the reasons I like this particular apartment is that you can look out the window and see the stacks and the big traveling cranes over in the Navy Yard, in Brooklyn. You can watch the ships go up and down the East River, and hear the tugs tooting at their work. At the time, they were building a huge aircraft carrier in the graving dock in the Navy Yard, and her superstructure was as large as some of the buildings around the yard. It was a great day.

  I glanced at my mall. There was a letter announcing a reunion of all people who had ever served on the Boxer. It would be in San Francisco in November. I figured I might go. There was a letter from a girl in San Francisco, too. I read it and figured that maybe I’d stay right where I was. The Navy Y.M.C.A. needed money, as usual, and I put their letter aside to remind me to send them some.

  While I was reading all this junk I took off my linen sport jacket and my bowtie, and put my foot up on the desk so I could scratch under my knee, which itched. Then I picked up the telephone and dialed the answering service. “Hello,” I said. “This is Rex Howard. You got any calls for me?”

  “A Mrs. Gillian called you, Mr. Howard,” the voice said. “Wanted you to call her at Eldorado 5-3000, as soon as possible.”

  “The Waldorf,” I said. “What did Mrs. Gillian want, did she say?”

  “Only for you to call her as soon as possible.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Goodbye.”

  I couldn’t think of anybody by the name of Gillian, either Mr. or Mrs., that I might know, but in my business you never can tell what’s behind the names people give to answering service operators. And you’ll find customers in the Waldorf-Astoria, too. So I dialed the hotel and asked for Mrs. Gillian, and pretty soon the switchboard had me plugged through to the room and a woman’s voice said hello.

  “Hello,” I said. “This is Rex Howard. Is this Mrs. Gillian?”

  “Rex!” the voice called back, and I recognized it immediately.

  “Janice!” I answered. “Jan, you old bum, what are you doing in New York and what’s this Mrs. Gillian stuff?”

  “That’s my new name, Rex. Mrs. Joseph Gillian. Isn’t it wonderful?”

  “Since when?” I asked. “When did all this happen?”

  “Two weeks ago, in Hot Springs,” she said. “But I can’t tell you all about it on the phone. Rex, you must come up here and meet Joe and we’ll all have dinner or something together. Now don’t say no, but get in a taxi and come up. I’m at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Do you know where that is?”

  “I know where it is.”

  “Well, hurry up, here as soon as you can. Joe isn’t here now but he will be any minute, and I want you to meet him. And I want to see you, too, Rex. It’s been almost five years, hasn’t it?”

  “Four years and a bit, anyhow,” I said. “That’s too long. You just sit tight and I’ll be up. Call room service and tell them to send up a bottle of bourbon and a bowl of ice for me, and whatever you’re drinking, now that you’re all married and settled down. What’s your room number, Jan?”

  She told me, and I hung up and went into the bathroom and grabbed an electric razor to hack off some of my whiskers. My homely red face smiled back at me as I thought of Jan and the fun we’d had together years before. Then I washed my face and hands, ran a comb through my snarled hair—a useless habit—put my coat back on, and left.

  She was there in the room when I knocked, and I gave her a great big kiss and a hug and lifted her up in the air and sat her on the top of the dresser.

  “Take me down, Rex,” she laughed at me. “This isn’t dignified, and I’m a dignified married lady now!”

  “You just sit up there and tell me all about it,” I said. “That’s a huge rock you got on your left hand. Is it real?”

  “Of course it’s real,” she said. “Joe gave it to me.”

  “He must be a great guy,” I said. “And in the chips as well. What does he look like and where is he, and how long have you been here in town? And how about a drink?”

  “Lift me down first,” she said, “and I’ll have some bourbon and tap water. Joe is a better-looking guy than you are and he’s thirty-seven years old and he’ll be here any minute.”

  “Here’s your drink.” I tapped the rims of the glasses together. “Best wishes for a happy married life, and
all that. Where did you meet this guy?”

  “I was working in a bookstore in Hot Springs and he came in to buy a book, and we got talking and we had a few dates and then we got married.”

  “Kind of quick, wasn’t it?”

  “Well, it took three months,” she said. “But I knew it was going to happen after the first week. You’ll like him, Rex. He isn’t quite as big as you are, and he has brown eyes and black hair and—and you’ll like him. Now lift me down, please.”

  I lifted her down. “Sure, I’ll like him. I’m always nuts about guys who marry my best girl right out from under my nose, without telling me anything about it. What are you doing here alone, though? I don’t exactly dig it.”

  “We weren’t going to come back here to New York until next week, Rex,” she explained. “But then Joe got this phone call from his business partner and he had to go to Canada. So he told me to take the train and come East and he would have a room reserved here for me, and he’d be back this evening. So I came, and here I am.”

  “Have another drink,” I said, pouring one for myself. “What does Joe do for a living?”

  “He’s a commission agent,” she said proudly. “He travels a lot.”

  “And makes a lot of money, too, I see,” I said, glancing again at the diamond she was wearing. “Well, I guess you’ve gone and done it good, Janice.”

  “Are you happy about it, Rex?” ‘

  “I’m happy if you’re happy, kid.”

  “Oh, I am happy, Rex. Happier than I’ve ever been in all my life, and I’m going to keep on this way as long as I live. Joe is a wonderful guy, and I love him, and—” The telephone rang, and she reached for it. “This must be Joe now. Hello. Hello, yes, this is Jan Gillian. Hello, Joe, where are you? Where?” Her face fell, and she stuck her lower lip out in a pout. “All right,” she said. “But hurry. Not one minute later than tomorrow morning, you promise? Oh Joe, I miss you so, darling.” She looked at me and blushed. “Good night, dear, hurry back as soon as you can.”

  “Maybe I should have left the room,” I said.

  “He’s stuck in Boston and won’t be back until tomorrow.”

  “That’s not the end of the world,” I told her. “Now have another drink and you and I will go out and enjoy ourselves without having to put up with your husband. You’ve never been to New York before, have you?”

  “No. This is my first time. And all I have is you. What a honeymoon.”

  “It could be worse. Put your face back on and we’ll go get something to eat. Do you want to go to a show or anything, or night clubbing?”

  “I just want to see Joe.”

  “Come on and eat, and then I’ll take you for a ride in the park or a walk down Fifth Avenue or something.” She disappeared into the bathroom and I took another small shot of the bourbon. Then she came back with a new paint job, looking like a million.

  Since she had never been to New York before we didn’t even leave the hotel, but took the elevator to the Starlight Roof for dinner and dancing. We had a pretty wonderful time. Jan and I had always bad wonderful times together, ever since we were kids back in Conway, and the long years we had spent without seeing each other, when I was off at sea, hadn’t harmed our warm affection at all.

  “Is it true that you’re a private eye, or whatever the name is?” she asked me as she stirred her coffee.

  “Don’t use that nasty word,” I said. “Here’s my card. Rex Howard, Security Adviser. High-class stuff.”

  “What does a security adviser do? Are you a broker, or something?”

  “No. A security adviser tells you how to keep from getting robbed and things like that. Say for example that you own a big factory, and things kept getting stolen. Your insurance company gets tired of paying you all the time, and tells you that either you get the stealing rate lowered or your insurance premium gets raised. What do you do? You send for Rex Howard, Security Adviser, and I tell you what to do.”

  “Go on, adviser,” she smiled. “What do you tell me to do?”

  “I look the joint over, see where things look tempting, like at the end of an assembly or packaging line where they’re easy to steal, and tell you to put a fence around it. Or I tell you to hire guards, if you need them. I also help you hire them if you don’t know how, and I train them and write the rules after they’re hired. This is a respectable and legitimate business. I get most of my clients by being recommended by the insurance companies. Sometimes I also take special guard jobs, like substituting for the guards in armored trucks when someone’s sick or on vacation, but that’s just for peanuts.”

  “You make much money doing this?”

  “I make some. Not too much, but enough to keep the sharks away. I’ve got my pension, and I own a few shares of General Motors and Jersey Standard stock, and some real estate out on the West Coast. I make out all right.”

  “Let’s go,” she said, suddenly impatient. “Maybe there’s a message for me down in the lobby.”

  There wasn’t, but the evening was still young, so we went, walking down Park Avenue to the New York Central Building and then over to Fifth Avenue, and window-shopped all the way up to Fifty-Seventh Street. We headed east on Fifty-Seventh Street until we got to Third Avenue, and then turned south.

  “The elevated railway ran over here up to a year or so ago,” I told her, “but they tore it down. This is a pretty good street now.” We came to Counihan’s Bar & Grill. “Come on in here and meet a friend of mine,” I said. “I haven’t seen him for an age.”

  “I ought to be getting back to the hotel, Rex,” she said. “Joe might call, and—”

  “Come in and have a nightcap, and I’ll take you right back to the hotel. I want to talk to the bartender for just a minute.”

  “All right,” she said, “just one.”

  The place was practically empty, as it usually is at that time. Counihan gets the after-office crowd, but they fade away at about seven-thirty. Then he gets an after-the-theater gang. In between a guy like me can get a peaceful drink.

  Cookie Slack was behind the bar, bald and fat and moonfaced. “Rex!” he shouted when he saw me. “Where you been, Rexy old boy? Thought maybe they’d got you back in a sailor suit—I heard they was diggin’ the bottom of the barrel. Guess you couldn’t make it, could you? What can I do for you, shipmate?”

  “We came for a drink. Jan, this is old Cookie Slack, the worst mess robber we ever had in the Navy. I ate his cooking for two hitches on the Black Hawk, and it darn near ruined me for life. Cookie, this is Mrs. Gillian, the most wonderful girl, in the world as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Pleased to meetcha, Mrs. Gillian,” Cookie said. He looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “What will you have, ma’am?”

  “Irish whisky on the rocks,” she said. “Tooley’s, if you have it.”

  “Bourbon for me.”

  He put glasses filled with ice in front of us, as we sat on the stools at the bar, and handed me a bottle of bourbon whisky. “Pour your own, Rex. I don’t want no complaining old chief boatswain’s mates around this place. Tooley’s Irish, you said, ma’am?” He looked in the cupboard behind the bar. “Don’t seem to have a bottle of Tooley’s out right now, but I know there’s some around here some place.”

  “Any other kind will do,” Janice said.

  “No it won’t,” Cookie corrected her. “Any friend of Rex Howard’s comes in here and asks for Tooley’s or Fooley’s or even for Schmooley’s, she gets it. Aha, I see you back there in the corner.” He pulled out a bottle of Tooley’s and displayed it proudly. “Here we are!” He broke the seal and twisted the cork out. “Shall I pour it for you, ma’am?”

  “Please,” she said.

  “Won’t you have a drop yourself, Cookie?” I invited. “Bourbon or Irish or name your own.”

  “I might have a little sip of gin,” he smiled. “Just happens
I have a bottle of my own handy here.” He filled a jigger for himself.

  “Well,” I said, raising my glass, “Mrs. Gillian here is practically a brand new bride, Cookie, so here’s to marriage, which is a wonderful institution that you and I have so far avoided.” I took a drink of my bourbon, and Cookie drained his gin. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Jan sniff at her drink.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked. “You got a fly in it or something?”

  “It’s all right,” she smiled. “This is the funniest-smelling Irish whisky I ever had, but I guess it won’t kill me.”

  It killed her. It killed her dead, right there at Counihan’s bar. She took one swallow of the whisky, gasped, dropped the glass and grabbed at her mouth. She tried to say something as she turned toward me, and fell backward off the bar stool.

  I almost caught her as she fell, and was on the floor beside her immediately. “Jan,” I cried. “Jan! What’s the matter?”

  She breathed twice, long deep breaths that sort of jerked as she exhaled. Then her body began to tremble terribly, convulsively, and a white froth formed at her lips. And then she was dead.

  And then I smelled the faint odor of bitter almonds and knew that it was one of the cyanides.

  Cookie Slack came around from behind the bar as I lowered her head back on the floor, straightened out her body, and put my handkerchief over her face. “What the hell happened, Rex? She ain’t …”

  “She’s dead,” I said. “Call the cops, Cookie.”

  “Dead?” His face was pasty white.

  “I said dead. Call the cops.” He stood there, and I slapped him across the face. “Don’t you drop dead, too, pal; I may be needing you before the evening’s over. Go call the cops.”

  “On the phone?” he asked. “Rex, what happened to her, for God’s sake? She just—”

  “She just dropped over dead,” I said, “from drinking poisoned whisky.” I looked at Cookie and he was still standing there. I tried to raise my hand to slap him again and couldn’t move it. I was in a worse shock than he was. I’ve seen many a man die in my time, but this was different. This was Jan, and I loved Jan more than anything in the world.