Bloody brawl
Renowned names smirked from paint-peeling signs over narrow doorways: Belmont, Grand, Gotham, Plaza. The coy humor of those Bowery flophouse proprietors in naming their stenchy hospices after uptown hotels had slight appeal for me at the moment. My own sense of humor was buckling at the knees. I paid off the taxi on a sidewalk dappled with sunlight and decorated with refuse moderne, walked past hock shops and open-air beef stewdios to the Blue Blazer.
I hadn’t waited for Walch to come out of his coma. Nothing would have been gained unless he’d undergone a change of heart and told me where to find Tildy; after our donnybrook, that didn’t seem likely.
There wasn’t much chance he’d swear out any complaint against me. Only result in bad publicity for his star; be enough of that anyhow, especially if Hacklin hadn’t impounded that farewell note to keep it out of the papers.
But the agent would be no bonus when it came to getting a statement out of Tildy to clear Auguste; wouldn’t be co-operative in uncovering Edie Eberlein’s part in last night’s fatalities. I’d have to do the digging on that, myself. Never had I felt less like it. What I craved was to stretch out on a soft sofa under low lights and sip a tall rum bomba. With Ruth Moore on the side.
The Blue Blazer was one of those drums where the tables are covered with red-checkered cloths, the waiters wear ankle-length aprons, and the straight drinks wouldn’t fill a thimble. It might have been decorated by a drunken painter. A long, black-walnut bar ran along one side; even at that early hour elbow parkage was at a premium.
I couldn’t see either La Eberlein or Roy Yaker, so I wedged myself in between a chief petty officer and a tubby little butterball reciting ribald limericks in a loud voice to anyone who’d listen. Talk about a melting pot! But simmering!
When the gnome-faced Hibernian in a candy-striped shirt brought me my rum sour, I asked him where it was the shooting had taken place. He leaned over the bar to point out a phone booth down by the washrooms.
“Second booth, where the new glass is in.” He would have been pleased to give gory details. “Johnny’d been right here at th’ bar, no more’n a cork pop from where you’re standin’ now. Tommy, there, just give him a ryeball on th’ house,” like an impresario he waved at a lanky barman with handlebar mustaches, evidently a celebrity since the assassination.
I would have asked whether Miss Eberlein had been present at the time of the gunplay, but something told me my inquiry would not have been courteously received. I drifted toward the phone booth. Halfway there, I spotted Edie. She wore black, with a rope of pearls big enough for an elephant’s collar. She was at a table with a brassy babe in a vermilion getup with a neckline that plunged way down to there, obviously not the kind of damsel discussed in polite circles of Burlington, Vermont.
They were ten tables away. Intervening quaffing and laffing made it impossible to hear what Edie was saying. But there were three Tom Collins glasses on their table.
I headed for a door demurely labeled: Used Beer Department, bumped into Yaker coming out.
He’d cut himself shaving. He smelled like a bar sink. The fawn gabardine he’d borrowed from Walch fitted him like a Cub Scout uniform. He boggled at me, glassy-eyed, trying to place me. I went in the men’s room, gave him a minute to wend his way between the cram-jammed tables, went out again.
He was dunking his nose in the Collins, listening to a tongue-lashing from Edie, when I pulled up a spare chair. I thought La Eberlein was going to keel over with apoplexy. She was practically speechless, but the few choice epithets she did sputter out were really pier-six stuff.
I didn’t fool around. “That key, Miss E. One I got out of your bag.”
“You got a nerve like a ulcerated tooth. Comin’ to my table without bein’—”
“Remember? You said the guest gave the key to you. I asked the guest. She said she never gave it to you.”
Plunging Neckline was dumfounded and scared; she wanted out. Yaker pawed soddenly at liquor dribbling off his chin. Edie cursed me till she ran short of breath. She clenched her glass as if to hurl the drink in my face. I did what I could to appear calm and unflustered. My insides were doing nip-ups; Edie’s loud scrawking was attracting the attention of several meaneyed waiters.
“Where’d you get that 21MM key, Edie?”
“You can’t crash my party an’ browbeat me, you thick dick!” she stormed. “Try to pin anything on me, I’ll teach you to mind your own goddam business.” She stabbed an accusing finger at Yaker. “He gimme that key. An’ I can prove it.”
Yaker was too groggy to use discretion. “You’re a lousy liar!” he shouted at her. “I never gave you any—” Two husky waiters laid ungentle hands on him, hauled him to his feet.
He took a feeble swing at one. The other grabbed Yaker’s arm, twisted it up behind his back. Yaker lunged. The table tipped. Glasses smashed. Plunging Neckline shrieked, flopped to the floor. Edie urged the waiters to throw me out, too. It was a merry melee.
I’m well aware what the Hollywood version of a private eye would have done at that point. He’d have smashed the bottom off a club soda bottle, used it to defend himself against all comers. Or, in some miraculous fashion, knocked heads together until the bouncers whined for mercy. I wasn’t up to that stouthearted stuff right then. If ever.
I’d had a sufficiency of rough and tumble for one twenty-four-hour period. Besides, I wanted to get Yaker out alive; it began to look as if they’d tear his arms off and beat him to death with ’em; three of them were muscling him — and for a guy who’d started with an alcoholic handicap, he was putting up a noble scrap.
The headwaiter steamed over with two more bulky-chested waiters. Edie indicated I was the root of the fracas. The waiters circled behind me.
I stood still. “Local 901?” I asked.
That gave them pause. One of the circlers put his hand on my shoulder, but he didn’t grab me. They were all members of that club, had to be. They thought I might hold a union card, too.
“Whassa trouble here?” The head man directed his question to me.
“Any you boys know Auguste Fessler?” After twenty years in the business, one or the other of them should have.
The waiter who had a hammerlock on Yaker called, “Works at the Plaza Royale? Yeah. I know Auguste.”
I talked fast. There’s been a slight misunderstanding. If the lady’d been offended, we — I included Yaker in my apology — begged her pardon. It had all occurred simply because I’d been trying to get a waiter friend of mine, Auguste, out of a serious foul-up with the cops. I handed a ten to the headwaiter. “Take the check and breakage out, split the difference with the boys, huh?” They let us go. Edie poured vials of scorn on them for not batting our teeth in. But they didn’t want any more commotion; the ten-spot tempered their wrath. They helped me lead Yaker out to the street.
He was a mess. A blossoming shiner. Nosebleed on Keith Walch’s fawn lapels. A loose tooth or a cut lip or both. But the fight had partly sobered him. He sobbed about scandal; his wife would kill him if she found out, so on.
We piled in a taxi. He blubbered gratitude for getting him out in one piece.
“Gotham Athletic,” I told the driver. Then I put it to Yaker. “What’s with that key? Did you give it to her, no kidding?”
“No. I gave her my key. Like a dumb fool. So those kids could go up to my suite while I was still downstairs at the banquet.”
He stuck to it. I thought he was leveling. He was a badly frightened man. All he wanted was to get straightened out, get his luggage, and go back to Philadelphia without having his family find out about the hassle.
I told him he’d have to get Walch to arrange about his belongings. But when we got to the club, Walch wasn’t there. And wouldn’t be, according to the ducal clerk.
“Mister Walch is out of town. Just left, few minutes ago.”
“Yair? Where?”
“Couldn’t say, sir.”
“Kentucky, maybe?”
He smiled as if he was on some amusing secret. “He does sometimes go there; that’s a fact.”