Strip for Violence | Page 9

"Any building or excavating near here?" He said no and as I turned to give him the glasses, I saw part of a pink housecoat in the doorway. Thelma was listening hard.
��
I asked the routine questions, to make it look like I was working and again he told me the bunk about it only being curiosity on his part. As I was leaving, Thelma asked if I wanted tea and cake. I told her no, and Will said to be careful not to lose the sliver of rock. I assured him it was in my office safe, but when he mentioned the stone Thelma looked sick and worried.
It was a little after two-thirty when I returned to the office. I couldn't make Will and his wife, they didn't look the type to be mixed up in anything shady. Anita was reading a true detective magazine. She asked if I'd read about this gal working behind a soda counter who recognized Public Enemy No. 3 by this wart he had on his pinky? Got a reward of two thousand--"
"Forget it," I said, giving her the sliver. "Knock off for the day and snoop around Will Johnson's place. Some open lots around there, see if any of the rocks look like this sample. Ask around if anybody else got their windows busted. Check with the weather bureau as to what kind of a day it was a month ago... unless it was real sunny he wouldn't have the blinds down in the middle of the afternoon."
"This assignment is jazzy as all get-out!"
"Look Humphrey, or are you Robert Ryan this afternoon? The guy is paying us, we give him a day's work at least. I'm going to hunt for this Lodge babe, will stop back here before I go home. Call me at six. And grow up--life isn't all cream puffs and excitement."
She screwed up her cute face at me, pointed to my cheek. "You shouldn't walk around with lipstick there."
"Where?"
"Here." She kissed me hard on the cheek, pulled away and laughed. She dropped the rock in her bag and walked out--her hips waving goodbye.

9
I WASHED UP, stopped for coffee and a sandwich, then drove to the last known address of Marion Lodge, a fairly clean rooming house on West 22nd Street. The owner vaguely remembered her, thought she had moved to some place on West 67th Street. There, I had to show her picture to a dozen candy store and newsstand people before one of them remembered Marion lived in a house down the block. This was a real flea-hive, stinking of insecticide and the blowsy old bag who ran it stunk from a lot of other things. It was a small apartment house that had been made into rooms and she said she had seen too many people come and go to recall any. A couple of bucks acted as a refresher course: Marion had fallen behind in her rent, been locked out. A month later Marion had sent the back rent and a truck called for her two suitcases. "Don't know why she bothered, nothing in them but cheap rags and... What? Aw, how do you expect me to remember the name of the trucking company? Some big truck all painted a baby blue..."
At a bar I got a handful of dimes and started calling the various moving companies in the phone directory, asking what color their vans were painted. A buck-twenty later I struck pay dirt. The rest was easy--the company kept records and I found Marion had moved up in the world--to a high-priced brownstone on East 71st Street. This had been converted into small, ritzy, furnished apartments--the kind you pay two hundred a month for. The janitor lived in the basement of another house down the block. A quiet, middle-aged man who liked to talk, he studied the picture, told me, "Tell you, mister, I've only been on the job less than a year and I never saw her. But people don't move around much, far as I know, we've only had one vacancy in last two years, apartment 3F, and I sure remember the last tenant there, Miss Margrita de Mayo!"
My face showed the name didn't register and he added, "Margrita, the TV sensation!" A silly note of pride crept into his voice, the way nobodys talk about a celebrity.
"Sure, girl with the fine, fine legs," I said. "Still live there?"
"No, sir, moved to a big suite in some hotel. But when I first came she was a struggling young actress and..."
"Got any old rent records here?"
"No, sir. But when she got her big break, it made me feel right good that a nice, quiet, young woman like her..."
I left and called my buddy in the electric company, dialed him back ten minutes later. "No record