the top of the table again with finishing thuds. "End of lecture. End of Soul-Searching
in public. Now, what did you want to talk to me about, Friend Noon?"
I laughed, relishing all his zeal as well as his points. There was a lot in what he
said, of course, but the other side could always come up with counter arguments. Like,
that's Show Biz, it sells tickets, nothing succeeds like Success---and so what? "One last word," I said, "before I begin my Beguine. Write a book on everything
you just told me. Anything with your name on it would walk off the stands. Besides,
you aren't the only one who hates critics. I know at least a hundred actors who'd buy a
dozen copies each. Very, very famous actors, too."
Suddenly he shrugged and tucked the cigarillo into the breast pocket of the blue
blazer he was wearing, complete with open-throat yellow sport shirt. His blue eyes
regarded me alertly.
"Just clearing my throat. Now, what's your narrative hook on this lovely critic
filled June evening?"
"I want to talk to you about Jo Malmedy."
"Past tense or present tense?"
I frowned. "You being funny or did I miss something on the car radio?"
Marcel Alevoinne chuckled and his lantern jaws deepened.
"Don't get sore. It's my suspense novel training. When a detective asks about a
person, it's usually because that person had suddenly become one of the naked and the
dead, Norman."
I sipped some Scotch, relieved.
"No. He's alive. As far as I know. Or he damn well may be. He sent me a play
in the morning mail and we've never met. I'm not in the angel business. Not just yet.
And-----"
"Time," Marcel Alevoinne said and held up one of those monster hands of his.
"Forget the questions and answers. Okay? Suppose you tell me why you called me up to meet you here and bring me right up to the minute. Then I'll clue you in on Malmedy.
Fair enough?"
So I told him. What there was to tell which wasn't much. He was very wise,
Mad Marcel. He got the punch line without being hit over the head with it. Somehow,
also, he was able to see what I saw too. The utter senseless, impossible fact of the play
itself. The Tall Dolores. Adaptation and lyrics by Jo Malmedy. I hadn't even bothered
wondering who the musician was. If there was a musician.
'Wow, Noon. Let me think about this one for a second."
"Take two. I'm not having any luck at all."
Marcel Alevoinne studied me across the table, as if trying to spot a joker lurking
somewhere in the deck. Or up my sleeve.
"Let me get this straight. This was a very famous case of yours, way back there
at the beginning. The woman is dead. Killed by you on the steps of the Statue of
Liberty. And only you and she knew what went on in your office. The dialogue, the
details. You've never really talked them over with anybody in all these years, I
suppose."
"No one. Not even my favorite cop, Mike Monks. Captain Monks, now.
Lieutenant Monks then. We weren't exactly pals. Oh, I've maybe mentioned Dolores
now and then down through the years but nobody could have came as close as Malmedy
has to the actual words and conversation I had with the big girl. It's weird, I'm telling
you. Like having someone peek into your past and come up with a well-nigh perfect
recording." "You're sure you're not forgetting anyone? After all, twenty years back is a long,
long time. Maybe you forgot somebody you told it all to and that person has a good ear
and passed it all on to Jo Malmedy. He's got a great ear, too, you know. Far greater
than Capote's, for all his In Cold Blood reputation. Remember how he put down
everything that Hickok and Smith told him without taking any notes at the time? Could
be something like that---Trumans' bragged about it ever since."
"It still doesn't wash," I persisted, "with the simple fact that no one was on deck
when I saw Dolores. And the rest of the play is like having your life played back to you.
Kinney, Reno, Doc Clarke, the Pirate Club and Alma---" I stopped talking because
something had come up from the floor and smacked me solidly in the solar plexus. For
an eternity I sat there, blinking like some silly owl. Marcel Alevoinne smiled and
nodded. He was seeing with his own keen eyes how a long-forgotten, half-remembered
world was suddenly surrounding me, swarming all over the present, filling the
Downey's atmosphere with low-flying dreams and regrets. There was a roaring and a
humming in my ears.
"Alma," he said, very gently. "There's always a woman."
"Christ," I said. "And I don't mean Judith Crist."
"Yes?" he urged me on. "You can skip Gloria Steinem, also."
"Alma Wheeler." Some oxygen rescued my breathing. "She was her sister.
Dolores. She was also a call girl. I fell in love with Alma. All the way. Should have
been for keeps but she never could forget how I killed Dolores. She came back a few
years later but---it still didn't work. What I'm trying to tell you is that she was all over
that case and knew most of it but not even she was in that office. Unless---" "Unless?" He was like some parody of a TV trial lawyer.
"Dolores could have told her all that. But even if she did, how can I account for
the uncanny accuracy of the play? Right down to my sickest puns? Dammit, Chuck, it
doesn't make sense."
His Mitchum sound was back in business. He huffed at me.
"Don't call me Chuck. Where is this Alma now?"
"I don't know."
"She'd be a little long in the tooth, wouldn't she?"
"Forty five or so---" I glared at him. "What's that got to do with it? She was the
most gorgeous blonde that ever turned a roomful of heads----men and women."
"Well, don't bit my head off. I'm merely using a logical mind. So---if Miss
Wheeler doesn't get in touch with Jo Malmedy and tell him all that he has put down on
paper---assuming that she didn't---how does a Malmedy, who must have been in short
pants when this all happened to you---come to suddenly write a musical play? When this
Jo Malmedy has never written a musical before and isn't likely to, given the sort of
subject matter he has worked with. After all, Widows Walk Away isn't exactly Forty
Second Street nor would I call The Man With The Power anything in the league of My
Fair Lady."
"Stop it, will you? I know all that. I want answers, not more questions, Marcel.
This is screwy enough as it is.""
Again he shrugged, not nearly as perplexed as I was.
"Not too screwy. Malmedy's a playwright. He sends you a play. That's normal
enough. What isn't is that it seems to be the life story of one of your ninety nine lives. One of your cases. What is even more left field than that is the fact that he would go
ahead and write such a thing without notifying you first or getting your approval. Who
wants to write non-fiction if the real-life hero is going to stand up on his hind legs in
outrage and say you-can't-do-this-or-print-this-I'll-sue-you? Hell, no author wants to
waste all that kind of writing time."
"I agree," I growled. "And so---?"
"And so," he picked up the ball with zest, "this is all very interesting. Very
interesting, indeed."
"Thank you, Arte Johnson." I finished the Scotch and looked around for the
waiter. Puzzled and a little sore. Dow
ney's had begun to fill. A steady stream of patrons
were gradually swinging through the frosted-glass doors which opened on Eighth
Avenue. It was the hour before evening performances of most of the plays on the street
and the quick-drink-before-we-go-in crowd was following its daily gambit. Marcel
Alevoinne ignored them all and stared me down.
"My turn, Noon. Now I will tell you about Jo Malmedy."
"Please do. Right now, he's a wizard to me. The Unknown. A guy who's pulled
off the biggest magic trick of my life."
"He's no ordinary writer, I'll admit, but forget the mystic and mysterious.
There's just more professionalism and craftsmanship here than meets your untrained eye.
I have an idea how Jo Malmedy could have pulled this off. Assuming your own memory
of what happened so many years ago is as reliable as you like to think it is." "It's my life, isn't it? How could I be wrong about anything like that? Nobody
knows but me, dammit, what happened between me and Dolores Ainsley Brand. And
that's all there is to it."
"You want to bet? It's been my experience that most people are incorrect about
what they said yesterday, let alone twenty years back."
"Okay--I won't argue. You tell me about Malmedy and what you imagine and or
think this is all about. I'll settle for an expert opinion."
"Let's have a refill first. Thirsty business talking."
I couldn't argue with that. And after all, I had come to him with the problem,
and he hadn't told me to go peddle my papers. Or the play. Mad Marcel Alevoinne
always had time to listen to a friend.
It was another of his famous virtues. And faults.
We got the drinks, his third martini, my second Scotch, and it was along about
the silent toasting time, when we saluted one another with tilted glasses, that the horse
manure really hit the fan. When they asked me all about it later down at Headquarters in
their non-air-conditioned little back room, there wasn't a coherent, sensible detail I
could remember for them. Talk about total recall or fine memory for a happening. There
wasn't a jot or an atom of the next two or three minutes that I took a clear mental picture
of. The cops didn't believe me and there was nobody to blame but myself.
I accidentally brushed an elbow against the pack of Camels on the polished table,
Marcel Alevoinne murmured something and I sighed and reached down to the carpeted
floor for the runaway cigarettes. The pack was near-empty so that about three white cylinders pole-vaulted out of the crinkly little prison that held them. Like scramming
cons.
Flashing impressions stayed with me. Such as they were.
I saw the long bar leading back toward the dining room at the rear of Downey's,
some illuminated signs I didn't bother to read and a portion of the wall montage of
famous faces which decorates the high panel separating the bar area from the row of
drinking booths. Several loners, all male, were standing at the bar, nibbling their
individual drinks. The music had blared a trifle louder so that I could make out the
familiar melody of Camelot. The violin section of the invisible orchestra was stringing it
out with romantic emphasis.
That was all I did remember. That was worth anything at all.
When I straightened erect, tucking the Camels into the pack, and saying
something about bending being good for the waistline, everything had altered. For the
worse. The tragically, horrible worse.
In less time than it takes to retrieve some runaway Camels.
Marcel Alevoinne nee Charles Oldenfield Wilson was sitting back against his
cushioned wall, staring at me. The smile on his face wasn't natural. It resembled the leer
on a ventriloquist's dummy. Fixed, perpetual, mouth gaping open in eternal woodenness.
He had three eyes, now. And all of them were open.
But the one centered between the two blue ones in his yellow-thatched head was
no match at all; a black, angry hole just a bit off-center and to the right a little. He
hadn't let out so much as a sign or a whisper or a grunt. Death can be that fast,
sometimes. That quick. That soundless.
Someone had popped him with a silencer from the frosted doors leading out to
Eighth Avenue, no more than ten feet from where we sat.
A marksman, a devil-may-care killer or an incredible opportunist.
Maybe all three.
The horror of it all was nobody had seen a thing.
Nobody in or out of Downey's Steak House.
And I didn't only have a mystery play on my hands.
I also had a corpse.
From Malmedy to Noon to Alevoinne.
A triple play to make the angels scream bloody murder.
The little brown cigarillo thrusting up from the patch pocket of the blue blazer
was never going to be smoked. Or removed again.
Not by Marcel Alevoinne who was DOA all the way.
Downey's had become his last stop.
On the way to the morgue.
He had finally come to that '30' which writers place at the end of their prose
works to signal no more copy to come.
He had reached it---the hard way.
By dying. By being murdered.
The hardest '30' of them all.
For an author who wanted to outlive Critics. Bullshit. All is bullshit."
Humphrey Bogart
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Q: You're a professional, Noon. So we'll treat you like one. Captain Monks is
on vacation and we're all aware of how you have helped this department in the past. We
hope you'll continue to do so. You know your rights so if anything is out of line just
speak up. Fair enough?
A: All right.
Q: Now---why did you make an appointment with the deceased at Downey's?
A: Are you asking why the appointment or why Downey's?
Q: I see you are an old hand at this. Very well. Answer both questions, please.
A: We both like the place. Been drinking there for years. I wanted to see him
because I've been thinking about writing my memoirs and there was no one better to ask
for pointers. Besides, he was always great company. The best there is.
Q: No more than that?
A: Spell out what you mean.
Q: You weren't working on a case?
A: No way. Business has been slow. That's why I'm thinking about my
memoirs. He said such a book could make a mint on the market these days.
Q: You seem reluctant to call the deceased by name.
A: Do I? Maybe it's because I don't like to hear him referred to as the deceased
and his real name wasn't Marcel and if I call him Chuck I'll confuse your steno there.
Q: You let us worry about that. Connolly's a pro, too.
A: All right, Vince. I will.
Q: So you bent down to pick up your cigarette pack that fell off the table and
when you sat back up, he was sitting right across from you with a bullet hole between his
eyes. You didn't see or hear anyone near your booth---is that it? A: Nobody at all. The slug had to come from the street door. It was a dead-on
shot. No angle of hit. He was facing it almost squarely. Anybody standing there could
take a bead. And hit something.
Q: We've talked to all the other witnesses. Everybody in Downey's wasn't
looking at the door at that particular moment. Nobody s
aw anyone pop in and pop out
again. The bartender was taking an order at the opposite end of the bar. Out of the
picture altogether.
A: That's always the way, isn't it?
Q: Only if everybody is telling the truth, Noon. Which sums up what our job is
all about. Checking stories.
A: Don't you think I'm telling the truth?
Q: Look, Noon. We'll play this straight for you. Your friend, the deceased,
was shot right between the eyes with a .38 caliber slug---from a silencer-fixed gun---if we
credit everyone's statement that nobody heard a shot in that bar. He was no more than
two feet away from you at all times. The range is in your favor, as you probably guessed
for yourself. Ballistics makes out at least ten feet or more. No powder burns on the face.
Okay. You didn't fire the shot. We believe that. We also believe that whatever paraffin
is on your hand is from all the cigarettes you smoke. But--
A: Go on. What don't you believe?
Q: We've checked while you were here with us. You haven't seen Alevoinne in
months. Almost a year to be exact. So you phone him out of the blue, arrange a meeting
in Downey's and that happens to be the very time he winds up DOA'd. See how that
makes us think? A: Did you also find out that he got to Downey's first and took the seat facing the
door or did I arrange that too, figuring he'd wait for me in a chair facing the front of the
place? That is if you're imagining I called up a hit man to get rid of my favorite author.
Q: I'll ask the questions, Noon.
A: Then ask some logical ones. This is wasting time.
Q: Let me be the judge of that.
A: I can't afford to. I might go to prison for life.
Q: Who would have any reason to kill Marcel Alevoinne? He wasn't married,
no women in his life---no business trouble we could learn about---a well-liked man.
A: You've got a boatload of suspects, Vince.
Q: You going to name me names?
A: Critics, Vince. Critics. He hated them all. High, middle and low. But you
can start with the literary criticism staff of the Times. He hated them most of all because
they had the most power---and they still have.
Q: You're generalizing, Noon. It's no good if you're going in for generalities. So
he hated critics. Big deal.
A: Maybe I am but it's the way Charles Oldenfield Wilson always felt about