A Private Party Read online

  Nick relayed the order and the drinks were served.

  "You know what I want to do?" Stanzyck said suddenly.

  "Yes, I know what you want to do," she said.

  Stanzyck laughed. "Dance," he told her. "I want to dance."

  "That's what I thought you meant," Roxy said. "Come on, then."

  They walked onto the dance floor without a word to Mayer. Nick turned to the bartender.

  "You're sure that Martini is dry, now?"

  "Can't get it any drier, Mr. Mayer."

  "Good. That's the way Mr. Stanzyck likes them."

  The big man was surprisingly graceful on the floor, although he held the girl as though he were afraid of crushing her. She seemed inclined to mold herself against him, and the arm around his neck was not casual but firm. Someone cut in, and though Stanzyck was on the verge of a blunt refusal, the girl interceded.

  "Don’t ration yourself, darling," she told him. "Give the other girls a break."

  He walked off obediently toward another couple. When he cut in, the man's face reflected his pride at having his own girl picked. But the girl herself was not especially different from the others in the room. She was pretty, but so were the others. Some had a less brittle beauty, some were taller, some were older. But they all shared sameness, a type, and if their sameness could be described it was that they could all be had. It was, in fact, all they did.

  "How's tricks, Ruthie?" Stanzyck asked the particular specimen who was now fitted against him as though glued there.

  "They could be better, Al."

  He scowled. "Cookie ain't beatin' you again?"

  "Cookie's small time, Al. I want the big time."

  "Yeah?"

  "What do you say, Al?" she asked him, her voice urgent.

  Stanzyck's face was immensely smug and self-satisfied is he squeezed the girl to him.

  “We'll see, baby," he told her grandly.

  "You just say the word, Al. Just whistle . . ."

  They were cut in on and Stanzyck moved on to another. Her name was Vera, and if the words of their conversation varied, its gist did not. Marion followed Vera. Then one he called only Baby. Then Julie, Sue and Em. Vera again, Baby again. Dotty and Doris.

  Doris he took with him to the bar. Nick Mayer had drifted elsewhere, leaving the two Martinis behind. The drink was warm now, and Stanzyck scowled. Fritz quickly replaced it and added a drink for Doris.

  Stanzyck rested his arms on the bar and scanned the floor for Roxy. His eyes found her immediately, dancing decorously, and he told himself again how different she was. This dame beside him was a bimbo. They were all bimbos. They shouldn't even be in the same room with Roxy. Roxy was a queen. Stanzyck sighed contentedly. And he was a king.

  Leaving Doris to make out for herself, he left the bar and shouldered his way across the floor to the redhead. She came into his arms with a smile.

  "Having fun, Al?"

  "Now."

  "You're the only dancer in the place," she said.

  "That's not all I'm only at," he told her.

  Roxy looked up at him, let her eyes close and said nothing. The moment, if that's what it was, was spoiled by a hand on Stanzyck's shoulder.

  "We're all set, Al," said Bert Hill at his elbow.

  "Okay, okay," Stanzyck growled. Then, to the girl, "Business, baby. I'll be right back."

  She nodded and he strode out of the room with the little lawyer. In the foyer he turned right, familiarly, and climbed a flight of stairs to the floor above. He went left then down a long hallway, passing seven closed doors and turning in at the eighth. This one he opened, stepping inside to a room that held a round table and four chairs.

  Nick Mayer sat on one of the chairs. Beside him was a breathing cadaver whose incredibly sad eyes turned up slowly at Stanzyck's entrance and regarded him balefully.

  "Limey," growled Stanzyck, "howya been?"

  "Fine," said Limey King unhappily.

  Stanzyck went round the table and sat in the chair facing the door. Bert Hill took the one opposite.

  "Okay," said Stanzyck abruptly, "let's get going. How much money have I got coming?"

  Limey King looked at Hill. The lawyer looked at Nick Mayer studied his fingernails thoughtfully.

  "Well?"

  "You haven't got anything coming," said King, his hollow voice echoing in the room.

  Stanzyck's tremendous head shot forward toward the thin man. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" he asked ominously.

  "There were expenses," answered King nervously. "Ask Nick."

  "You're goddamn right I'll ask Nick," he thundered. "I figure I'm owed ten grand. Where is it?"

  "Ten grand," said Mayer, his own voice calm, "is what it cost to spring you."

  "You're a liar!"

  There was silence in the room. Nick Mayer raised his face slowly to Stanzyck's, his eyes peaceful, his expression unruffled, and let another long moment pass.

  He said, "I didn't ask for a receipted bill, Al. But you know I'm not a liar."

  "Sure, Nicky. I went off the handle." He spoke almost contritely, but when he turned to Bert Hill his voice was unpleasant again. "What I want to know is how come it cost so much. What happened to the great fixer?"

  The lawyer shook his head. "Nick handled the whole thing."

  "And it cost ten grand?"

  "It was special," said Mayer patiently. "We weren't dealing with hoods." He flicked an ash lazily from his cigarette. "And what was tougher, we had the papers all over us. That made the arrangements very special."

  "Who was the gun?"

  "A lad out of Los Angeles," Mayer told him. "A crazy little guy named Augie."

  "Never heard of him," Stanzyck muttered irritably.

  "Didn't you, Al?" asked Mayer, smiling, and there seemed to be some significance in the question for Stanzyck because he nodded his head.

  "But if you need some scratch," added Mayer, "I can let you have a couple of yards."

  “I was counting on that teifgrand."

  "In that case," said Mayer, "I make a motion that the treasury lend the business agent and treasurer ten thousand dollars. Any seconds?"

  "You gonna pay it back?" asked Limey.

  "Sure, sure. But just don't press me for it, pal, or I'll throw you out on your ear."

  "That's no way to talk, Al," complained King. "After all, I'm president."

  "You're nothing!" Stanzyck told him ruthlessly. "And if you think you are, we'll take a vote on that."

  "I didn't mean anything," the thin man pleaded.

  "Who seconds my motion?" asked Mayer.

  "I do," said King.

  "All in favor raise their right hand."

  Four hands went up in the air.

  "All opposed raise their left hand," said Mayer.

  There were no hands in the air.

  "Motion carried."

  "What do I do," asked Stanzyck immediately, "write myself a check for it?"

  "Sure," Nick Mayer told him. But there was an objection.

  "The thing to do," said Bert Hill, "is to have Nick write the check and enter it in the voucher as a personal loan from the treasury without interest."

  "Why Nick? What's the matter with my signature?"

  "Because someday, somebody is going to look at our books. It'll look better if the assistant treasurer signs the check to you."

  Stanzyck glowered, and it was obvious that he resented the fact he shouldn't sign the check.

  "Anything else?" he asked belligerently.

  "Yes," said Hill. "There's a petition being circulated by the rank and file members?"

  "What kind of a petition?"

  "Asking for a change in the bylaws," the lawyer told him. "They've got one hundred signatures."

  "What kind of changes in the bylaws?"

  Hill cleared his throat. "This petition wants a new election setup . . ."

  "That petition can go to hell!"

  "It also wants the position of business manager and treasurer to
be taken off the lifetime status," Hill said.

  "Oh, it does, does it?"

  "Don't look at me, Al," the lawyer told him. "I'm just telling you what this petition is asking for."

  "So what?"

  "So what are we going to do about it?"

  "Do? Tell 'em that Al Stanzyck's back in charge. If I'd been around there wouldn't be any lousy petition. What's the matter with you guys, can't you run things for a couple of months?"

  "That's not the point."

  "No? Then what is the point?"

  The lawyer looked down at his hands for a moment, then raised his head again. "This is just a suggestion," he began slowly, "but it might be a good idea for you to lay low for a while. To give up your job."

  Stanzyck stared silently across the table and the muscles in his jaw began to work slowly back and forth. The lawyer's eyes looked away.

  "What do you think of that suggestion, Limey?" Stanzyck asked quietly.

  King's shoulders gave an almost imperceptible shrug.

  "Nick?"

  "I'm against it, Al. One thousand percent."

  Stanzyck raised his arm and laid his hand over Mayer's wrist. "I always know where I stand with you, Nick," he said.

  Mayer nodded.

  "Any other suggestions?" Stanzyck asked Hill.

  "It was only a suggestion," said the lawyer. "I was thinking of you, Al. The publicity."

  "Stop thinking about me," he was told. "Is there anything else you guys want to talk about?"

  "I got these," Mayer said, lifting a briefcase that had rested against the leg of his chair. "But maybe you'd rather look at them some other time."

  "What are they?"

  "Records. The ones I've been keeping for you till you got back."

  Stanzyck took the briefcase. "Yeah," he said, opening it, "I'd like to see what happened while I been away." He looked up. "You guys blow."

  The three men stood up and filed out of the room. Stanzyck spread the papers before him. They were financial statements, on the head of which was printed: Loaders' Union, Local No. 1, Independent. Below was a carefully itemized account of money received and money paid out for the past eight weeks. Stanzyck traced each amount carefully on the first page and then reached into his breast pocket for a cigar. His hand went to his other pocket for matches but his fingers touched something that surprised him and he pulled out a piece of notepaper.

  It was folded in half and when it was opened there was a line of writing. "What are you waiting for?" he read, and the puzzled expression on his face gave way to a knowing smile. What was he waiting for? He thought. This was no time to be reading dull statements.

  He pushed his chair back, stuffed the report back into the briefcase, and left the room. His steps carried him back along the hallway, but instead of turning off at the staircase, he continued on.

  What was he waiting for? Wasn't that just like her, he thought appreciatively, slipping that note in his pocket? He knew what she was waiting for. She was waiting for him. And he knew where she was waiting. She was right on the other side of this door.

  Stanzyck's fingers folded over the knob and as they turned he tried to imagine how it was going to be in that room, how she would look, what she would say to him.

  He opened the door.

  "Here I am, Roxy," Al Stanzyck said and his eyes widened in surprise just an instant before the gun roared. A bullet was buried in his forehead. Another followed. The gun fired again, sending a slug deep in his chest. A fourth and fifth slammed into his body but Al Stanzyck was already dead.

  CHAPTER 2

  The headline, seventy-two points high, screamed from the tabloid's front page above a five-column cut of Stanzyck's bloody, sprawling body in the doorway of the room at The Inn.

  Joe Bannerman, a lieutenant of detectives attached to Homicide West, Manhattan, studied the grisly photo carefully and made some impersonally professional decisions about the manner in which Stanzyck had met his death. He turned then to the news account on page two. All the names were familiar: Bert Hill, Nick Mayer, George "Limey" King. There was a deep two-column cut of the girl. She was called Roxanne Garde in the paper and they had used a photograph of her in the show-girl costume from High Living, last year's musical.

  Bannerman read that Stanzyck had been killed at a private party celebrating his release that afternoon from the City Prison. He had been released, it said, on the eve of his trial for the murder of Ralph Bogan, a newspaper reporter. The District Attorney had ordered Stanzyck set free in the face of a habeas corpus action by Stanzyck's lawyer. The State's case against the ex-convict and waterfront racketeer had collapsed when the second of two eyewitnesses to the shooting of Bogan had been killed while in police custody. A week after Stanzyck's arrest, the other eyewitness had died under “mysterious” circumstances but the authorities insisted the death was a suicide.

  Spotted in the story columns were cuts of the people involved. One of them was a likeness of Ralph Bogan, and Bannerman looked at it and remembered.

  He had never heard of Ralph Bogan until the night he saw him as a bullet-gutted corpse at the end of Pier 46, North River. The 16th Precinct had received an anonymous phone call, dispatched one of its own cars to have a look and then sent for the Homicide Squad.

  I had the duty that night, Bannerman recalled. Captain Galetta was on sick leave and I took Bill Weir and Mike Stern with me. It comes back so clearly, he thought. The kind of a night it was, warm with spring, the way the corpse looked, his legs and arms twisted unnaturally, the things that were said . . .

  "Is this the way you found him?" Bannerman asked the overweight, over-aged, sleepy-looking radio patrolman.

  "We had to move him around a little, Lieutenant," he explained.

  "Why?"

  "To find out who he was."

  "Oh. And who did you find out he was?"

  "Man name of Ralph A. Bogan. Lived at number eleven West Fifty-Third Street. He was carrying a press card."

  "A what?" Bannerman asked.

  "A press card," he repeated dully and he still didn't understand the implication of a man with a press card being killed on a pier.

  There was a commotion then at the entrance to the pier and Bannerman looked to see a taxicab halted there and a woman hurrying from it toward them. Not a woman, really, he noticed as she got closer, but a girl. A young girl.

  "Who's she?" the detective asked.

  "Must be some member of the family," replied the radio cop. "We phoned the name to our desk and the sarge must have notified her."

  "Oh, fine," Bannerman said, and the note of complaint in his voice was soon verified. The girl was Ann Bogan, the dead man’s sister, but getting word of her brother's murder over the, telephone had left her in semi-shock. She was so overwrought, and so useless to Bannerman as a source of information, that he turned her over to young Weir while he, himself, got busy with Ralph Bogan's wallet.

  The press card did not identify the man's newspaper, and Bannerman instructed Stern to get on the pier telephone at once. The first five papers the plain-clothes man called had never heard of Ralph Bogan. The sixth was The Star and Stern seemed to be having trouble.

  Bannerman took the phone.

  "This is Joe Bannerman," he snapped. "Put Whitey Hoag on the wire." Then, "Whitey? You got a legman named Ralph Bogan?"

  "Oh."

  "Oh, what?"

  "Is he hurt?"

  "What was he doing on Pier 46 in the middle of the night?"

  "Is he hurt?"

  "He's dead."

  "I'll be right down, Lieutenant."

  "You're wasting my time. What was he doing on the pier?"

  "His sign-out card," said Hoag, "says he had a date to meet Al Stanzyck—"

  "Stanzyck! Why?"

  "Well . . .”

  "Fast, Hoag. Damn it, man, time is everything in these things!"

  "We're getting up a series, Lieutenant. A series on the pier rackets. Listen, I'll be right down . . ."

  Banne
rman slammed the phone on the hook. "Get Al Stanzyck," he told his two assistants.

  Bill Weir gave him a look.

  "All right," Bannerman said. "Take Miss Bogan home first. Then you and Stern get cracking. Bring Al Stanzyck in!"

  The morgue wagon arrived, and when the police photographers were through Bannerman let them take the body away for the autopsy. A young doctor from the medical examiner's office took the detective aside and told him, very seriously, that the corpse had died from multiple bullet wounds. Bannerman thanked him and asked when it had happened.

  Well . . ."

  "Look, son. Was the blood caked or just dry? Were his fingers locked or just stiff? Was there a moist spot under the body or was it dry? Was?"

  "About two hours ago, sir. That's unofficial. A guess."

  Bannerman slapped him on the back and sent him toward the wagon. "Keep guessing, kid," he told him. "You'll be the head man that way."

  Next he called the desk sergeant at the 16th Precinct.

  "Who was it who tipped you off on this thing?"

  “A man. Wouldn't give his name."

  "If he calls back?"

  "Don't you worry, Lieutenant," was the self-assured interruption. "If he calls again we'll get him."

  Sure. Bannerman thought, glowering at the receiver. You’ll get him just by sitting there on your fat fanny. He hung up.

  A uniformed policeman escorted two men to the detective. One was introduced as representing the owners of the pier. The other was the stevedore boss.

  “Got the work sheet?" Bannerman asked and the thick-unhappy-faced man handed over a list covered with names.

  "When did you leave the pier?"

  “I checked 'em off the pier myself," the boss said, his, his surly.

  Bannerman studied him for a moment, measuring the depth of the man's animosity.

  “You were the last one off?" he asked.

  “I didn't say that."

  "What did you say?"

  The stevedore spat at Bannerman's feet. "There's a check-up squad," he said, not wanting to part with any information. "A couple of watchmen."

  “What do they do?"

  "They look around," he said. "See if anything's been missed or left behind on the pier."

  "Shouldn't they be here now?"

  "How the hell should I know?"

  "What's their names?" Bannerman persisted, keeping his voice even against the other's truculence.