A Private Party Page 8

  For her forty-five thousand dollars Maude had bought forty-five square feet of a nude. But this was no nude to please the romantic eye. The woman sprawled across Maude's three walls was, for one thing, obese. In real life she would have weighed well over three hundred pounds. For another, she was not reclining languorously, not even preening, as romantic painters' nudes are apt to do. This poor woman was being tortured on a medieval rack, her ankles and wrists fastened by thongs. But in place of the hooded Inquisitors were six naked female torturers, all bearing a letter "A" beneath their ample-bosoms that was a painstaking, simile of the script “A" Maude had decided on for Annette's in the simple brass sign on the building.

  The Frenchman's final touch was the smoke and the fire. The fire roared in the background, highlighting the scene up front, and thrust into its hellish center was a long-handled branding iron bearing the famous "A." And rising from the fire was smoke that had formed itself into a dollar sign. The mural was autographed across the buttocks of one of the attendants.

  That was what Maude bought. After her first outburst she became calm, then began ushering—almost shoving—her invited guests out of the room. The prepared tour of the place was completed and she stood, hostess-style, to wish them goodbye at the door. When the last one was gone, she locked the door, turned and leaned against it as she studied each detail of the huge mural.

  Julie tiptoed into the deathly quiet room. Julie, an efficient but untitled assistant madame in the old days, was a Mlle. Julianne, Assistant Directoress of Annette's.

  “Oh, that sneaky foreign bastard!" breathed Julie sympathetically, her widened eyes glued to the painting. Then she turned to Maude, and to her everlasting surprise, Maude was smiling. "When are you going to have it rubbed out?'" she asked then.

  “I don't know," said Maude. "Now that I'm over being mad at that louse I think it's kind of cute."

  Cute?" The word seemed to gag in Julie's throat.

  “That frog thinks he made me with this thing," said Maude. "He thinks he stole a piece without paying for it. You know what I think? I think he made me, all right—He made me famous."

  “Maude! You're not going to keep that thing on the wall!"

  “Keep it? I'm going to advertise it. You know, Julie, I kinda wished we had it when this was a whorehouse. It's that distinguished."

  “Oh, Maude!"

  “Sure it is. It's like the rug. There ain't another one like it in the world."

  And so it remained as it was, untouched, and the women who did get appointments at Annette's talked about it incessantly—so much so that other women had to see it, that it got rumored about in the columns, that men paid as much as one hundred dollars to have a look at it after hours.

  Its fame spread, in fact, across the ocean. The artist, back in Paris, was more of a celebrity than he had ever been—and having swept through the forty-five thousand, he wrote a letter to Maude demanding the half fee that had been denied him. Her answer was a note, air mailed: "I've been taken once by a lot of men. But not twice. Yours, Maude."

  Maude's original plans for the room included chairs and couches, but the mural changed all that. Now the only piece of furniture was a discreet, kidney-shaped table behind which sat a beautiful mulatto receptionist. It was toward this table that Roxanne Garde made her way.

  "Mamzel Julianne is ready for you, Miss Garde," she said neutrally, hooding her brown eyes to shield the curiosity she and all the others at Annette's felt about this girl whose boyfriend had gone out of her life so spectacularly. Everyone had followed the case avidly in the newspapers, and there had been an unexplainedly feminine sympathy for her when it seemed that her Mr. Stanzyck was to be electrocuted. Then came the deaths of both witnesses, and Stanzyck's release. They all speculated on the macabre reunion that would follow—but even the wildest-eyed guesser among them had not predicted what had happened on their first night together.

  Roxanne passed through a draped doorway into a wide corridor. Eight closed doors, four on either side, faced the corridor and beyond each door was a private compartment that had once contained a trysting bed but now held a massage table, a chaise lounge, a cabinet stocked with oils and creams and imposing array of lamps and electronic equipment. Roxanne continued on down the corridor, soundproofed to muffle the symphony of grunts and protests from the rooms, and climbed the flight of recessed stairs to the floor above. At the top was a circular, glass-enclosed office that commanded a view of the staircase as well as the new corridor. In the center of the office was a desk, behind which sat Maude-Annette studying some papers. Standing beside her, but now coming forward to greet Roxanne, was Julie.

  "Oh, honey, I can't tell you how sorry I am!" She took both of Roxanne's hands in her own, and her round face was a model of sympathy. Secretly she was disappointed in the redhead's bright green suit, but then she decided that the dressmaker was probably rushing a complete line of glamorous appropriately black things. Annette, after one short glance, continued to work on her papers. "I'm so broke up "about it," Julie added fervently.

  "Don't let it get you down," Roxanne told her, retrieving her hands and striding directly toward one of the closed doors. Julie overtook her, opened the door and ushered her inside.

  "What do you feel up to, honey?" she asked

  "The treatment," said Roxanne. "My morale needs a good sharp goose." She stood in the center of the room and Julie came forward to unbutton the front of her suit jacket.

  "I can understand," said Julie.

  "You can?" She shrugged the jacket from her shoulders and Julie came around to take it and hang it carefully in the closet.

  "It must have been a terrible thing," said Julie tentatively.

  Roxanne unzippered the narrow skirt and Julie stooped to ease it over her slim hips.

  "Did you—talk to him at all?"

  "Sure." She stepped out of the black half slip unaided while Julie unlocked the black brassiere.

  "I don't suppose—That is . . ."

  "No, we didn't get to bed, Julie." She left the stockings, garter belt and panties in a heap on the floor. Julie scooped them up, laid them neatly in a looker set into the closet and returned to wrap the naked girl in a white terrycloth robe emblazoned with the initial "A."

  "I'm awfully sorry," Julie said again, holding the door ajar.

  "That we didn't get to bed?" Roxanne said, throwing the question over her shoulder as she walked from the room and turned left toward the end of the corridor. Julie hurried after her, thinking that this was the way a modern girl like Roxanne Garde hid her grief.

  There were swinging doors at the end of the corridor and Roxanne pushed them open to enter a small, white-walled, white-tiled room lined with shelves of towels. Across the room were two more doors, one marked DRY the other WET.

  "Dry," said Roxanne and Julie pulled open the door with an effort. As the redhead stripped the robe from her body, Julie handed her two of the towels and watched her pass through the doorway. Then she closed the door from the outside.

  Roxanne gasped and her body jackknifed as the first blast of hot dry air seared her lungs. It always shocked her like this. Deceived by the perfect clearness of the room, she forever neglected to take a long cushioning breath before entering. Now she sank to her knees, putting her face close to the cooler floor and coaxed small bits of air into her mouth. That was better, but not much. She laid the towels down and stretched herself flat on the floor, stomach down, and let her body go limp. As usual, the vision of a desert took hold in her mind, a desert that stretched endlessly, waterlessly, with Roxanne Garde dying in the middle of it.

  Minutes went by and her breathing became less tortured. She pushed herself carefully to a kneeling position and raised her head. If it was merely desert-hot at floor level, this new layer of air was hell itself. But she knew better than that. It was when she stood in the low-ceilinged room that it really got hot. She waited, counting to herself slowly, and then lifted one leg. Another pause, then the other leg. It was unbearable t
o stand in this heat. No human being could survive it. But she stood in it. Walked, in fact, across the room toward the thermometer and gauge that regulated the temperature. The needle stood at an unbelievable 183 degrees.

  A bell rang ten minutes later and Roxanne went as quickly as she could to the door. Julie held it open, and as the girl staggered out she recovered her bright red body with the robe.

  They left the steam room and returned to the private room. Someone else was there, a straw-haired Amazon who might have been a model for one of the rack turners in the mural below.

  "Geez, Miss Garde, I was awful sorry when I read what happened to your mister."

  "Yes," said Roxanne, coming directly to the massage table, handing the robe once more to Julie and stretching out on her back.

  The woman bent over her menacingly: "I lost a man once," she said. "So I know just what you feel."

  If the redhead was going to answer, it was lost as the woman's powerful fingers dug into the pit of her stomach in a vain search for any excess flesh there. What she could clutch she kneaded, and then extended the operation to the thighs. Within a few minutes the blonde woman was perspiring freely.

  "Over," she commanded and Roxanne turned. The groping fingers dug into her shoulders, her back, her buttocks—down to her calves. Then, without warning, she was shocked by cold alcohol poured freely from a bottle. The woman turned her hands sideways, made blades of them, and began a vigorous, painful chopping motion from ankle to neck and back again. Julie followed the frantic-moving hands with an application of some thick pink cream, then the massage was completed with a brisk rubdown with a towel that returned her skin to its glowing pinkness.

  "Over," the masseuse said again and as Roxanne slowly revolved to her back an electric apparatus was wheeled to the side of the table. It was a rectangular black box whose top consisted of three large dials and a collection of long wires. There were eleven wires in all, and beside the box were eleven dampened, cloth-covered pads. While Julie placed one of the pads on Roxanne's chest, the masseuse placed one under each breast. Julie reached for two more and laid them at the base of Roxanne's stomach, just below the navel.

  "Up," said the masseuse, and when Roxanne bridged herself, another pair was slipped beneath her buttocks. The final two were set against her thighs and then all eleven were plugged into the wires. Julie flipped the main switch in the black box and then moved aside for the masseuse.

  "Here we go," said the blonde and began revolving each of the dials in turn.

  Roxanne's body gave a convulsive jump, settled, and jumped again as several hundred volts of electricity charged into her body. It was an alternating current—a charge, a pause, a charge, a pause—and with each turn of the dial the voltage increased.

  Roxanne held fast to the sides of the table, her teeth set tight, and with her eyes shut tried to gauge the timing of the exerciser. From time to time, Julie came forward to spread an oil over her legs and thighs and breasts and cheeks. The door closed and. opened several times as the blonde came and went to check the voltage and increase it. After thirty minutes, each dial was delivering its maximum charge. And twenty minutes after that the power was shut off.

  Another manual massage followed, this one delivered with the palms of the hands and concentrating on the chin and the face muscles. A different cream, tannish in color, was laid over her body and a battery of ultraviolet lamps were brought up. Slipping opaque glasses over her eyes, Roxanne relaxed for the first time in almost two hours.

  "Would you hand me the phone?" she said to Julie. Then she dialed a number, a number she had memorized earlier that morning. Julie handed her the receiver.

  "Timothy Dane," said a female voice and Roxanne frowned.

  "Put the great man on," she said.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Dane. Let me speak to him."

  "This is Mr. Dane's answering service," came the polite reply. "He isn't in right now, but can I take a message?"

  "Where is he?"

  "I can't say. Is there a message?"

  "Tell him Roxanne Garde called. Ask him to call me."

  "Thank you, Miss Garde."

  "And tell him it's important. Very important." Roxanne put the receiver on its cradle. Then she lit a cigarette.

  "Julie?"

  "Yes, honey."

  "You ever been hit below the belt, Julie? I mean really rocked?"

  "Well, I don't know. What do you mean?"

  "By a man, that's what I mean."

  Julie blinked in surprise, her mind still full of Al Stanzyck. "Well, I don't know," she said again.

  "Well, I do know." She snubbed the cigarette into a tray.

  "You mean you've met another man?"

  Roxanne gave a short laugh. "Met him, is right. I almost killed him. Maybe," she said, "I should have." She turned over on her stomach, cradling her head on one arm, letting the lamps shine on her naked back. "Maybe I will," she murmured and dozed off.

  Several hours later, her body showered, her hair shampooed and set in flowing waves, Roxanne was leaving Annette's. Maude intercepted her at the doorway of the glass office.

  "I don't like to be a ghoul," she said, "but what about your bills?"

  "From now on, I'm paying my own bills," Roxanne told her.

  "Really?"

  "Really." She smiled down at the smaller woman. "I'm turning over a brand-new leaf."

  Then, with a wave of her arm, she was gone, and Maude studied her walk and thought about the excitement that e would have caused in the old days.

  CHAPTER 8

  Timothy Dane had not been near his office that morning. During the hour-long return from Newchester the night before he had speculated about "Mrs. Stanzyck" and her concern for a briefcase, but had then been forced to put the confused meeting with her out of his mind and give all his attention to the question of who had killed Mr. Stanzyck.

  The idea that a cop had done the deed was not so outlandish as it had been at first hearing that morning. Especially in the light of Bannerman's heavy-handed efforts to stall any investigation about it. Had it not been for that, the private detective's own opinion was that the gangster had been cut down for a reason more sordid than some fanatic's desire to see justice done at any cost.

  The note that now rested in his watchcase, for instance. What was Stanzyck waiting for? Had he received the message before he arrived at his party—or had it been delivered after he got there? Did it refer to a debt he owed—or a date? And a date with a man or a woman? That brought him once again to Roxanne Garde and once again he put her aside for future questioning. For questioning when he knew even a little more than he did now and could make use of her answers.

  Back to the big thing. If the killing was a personal one then the killer could reasonably have been another guest at the party. That meant, and he winced, sifting each person's background for a motive and checking their whereabouts at the time Stanzyck was shot. But dull as the work would be, it would have to be done and done alone. Chief Purdy and his crew would only get in the way.

  But if the killer had been a policeman then he would have had to get out of the building. Out of the building and away from the neighborhood—which could only be done by car in that countrified section.

  In any event, he would have to start at the beginning, at The Inn itself, and early the next morning that was just where Dane was. He parked his car in front of the entrance, climbed the stairs and ran into opposition immediately.

  "We're not open for business yet," said a burly German in shirt sleeves and work pants.

  "I'm not bringing you any. Are you the boss here?"

  "Hermann's in the bar. He don't see salesman today. Come back next week."

  "Where's the bar?"

  "I said?"

  "I said, you said, he said—Get the hell out of my hair, buddy, I've got things to do." But the man had no intention of standing aside and Dane had to shove him away noisily.

  "I break your arm!" He even grabbed for it and
the detective had to shove him again, so hard this time that he was thrown against the railing the hatcheck booth.

  "Was ist los!"

  Dane turned to see a short, compact individual striding toward him importantly.

  "You're Hermann?"

  "I'm Hermann. Who are you?"

  "Timothy Dane. I?"

  Hermann wasn't interested. He whirled to the burly one. "What's going on here, Carl?"

  Carl told him his version in rapid German.

  "Out," said Hermann to Dane. "Whatever it is, we already got too much."

  "If you mean trouble, Hermann, you might be right. All I want is?"

  "I said out!" Hermann screamed, unveiling an easily triggered temper. "Walk out or I throw you out!"

  "Now, look, Hermann?"

  "Carl!"

  "Ready!"

  But Carl wasn't ready at all, not for what Dane did to him. With no particular animosity—feeling, in fact, a little foolish—he drove his fist deep into Carl's vulnerable beer-keg body and dropped him, purple-faced and gasping to the floor.

  "Rudy! Gus! Everybody!" Hermann, hands cupped to his mouth, sounded the call to arms.

  "Goddamnit, Hermann, Mr. Hill isn't going to like this nonsense ..."

  “Mr. Hill? Mr. Bert Hill?"

  Dane's main interest was on the crew who were converging; on the scene from half a dozen directions. Especially on one who carried a butcher's cleaver in his hand.

  “Mr. Hill sent you?" Hermann was saying cordially, ”You’re a friend of Mr. Hill's?"