The Ghost and the Dead Deb

“Jack, it looks like he’s coming straight for this building.”

“No surprise, doll. This is his apartment you’re standing in.”

“What?!”

“Relax, baby.”

“But, Jack, I don’t know even what happened in your case. I haven’t finished reading the file!”

“And that’s exactly why I brought you here. Just think of it as a little on-the-job training.”

I suddenly had trouble breathing. This might have been a dream, but it felt very real to me at the moment. I could smell the rancid odor of stale beer from McSorley’s across the street, hear the lightly falling rain outside, feel the suffocating warmth of this shabby two-room apartment.

“Are you crazy?” I told Jack. “I won’t know what to do or say. I think we should get out of here.”

“Take it easy, baby. Just stay behind me. Watch and learn.”

“Learn what?”

“For starters, how to conduct an interrogation. Namely, a little information can get you a long way if you use it right.”

A minute later I heard a key in the door and Joey Lubrano’s powerful form came stumbling into his small, unkempt apartment. He walked into the tiny living room, reached under the stained shade of a stand-up lamp, and turned it on. The pale glow of the low-watt bulb revealed Jack Shepard, relaxing in an armchair, smoking a cigarette. I stood in the shadows behind him, trying not to shake like a kitten at a dog fight.

Joey was young—in his early twenties was my guess—and just as Italian-handsome as Johnny Napp. Dimpled chin, Roman nose, deep brown eyes, and jet-black hair slickly combed. His physique looked even more impressive in the confines of the small apartment. His muscles packed into the white T-shirt and elevator operator uniform. Suffice it to say, I could see why a high-society gal like Mrs. Nolan may have looked twice at her elevator man.

“Hello, Joey.”

Joey Lubrano froze, his slightly glazed eyes focusing fast. “What the . . . ? What the hell are you doin’ here? And how did you get in?”

Jack took a long drag on his cigarette, stubbed it out on the ashtray beside him. “Your building super was impressed with my P.I. license. Of course, I palmed him half a C note when I flashed him my ticket. That may have helped.”

“Get lost.”

“Relax, Joey. I just want to talk.”

Lubrano stepped forward, his face flushing red, his hands balling at his sides. “Well, I don’t.”

“Jack,” I whispered. “Be careful. He looks pretty angry.”

Lubrano looked up, straight into my face. “Who the hell is she?”

“Tonight she’s my partner.”

I stared in shock that the man could see me at all. A part of me hoped that Jack had brought me back here as an invisible bystander. Apparently not. I looked down to find myself in a belted linen suit with a pencil-thin skirt —the same shade of gray as Jack’s double-breasted. I felt a small hat pinned to my upswept hair, saw white gloves on my hands—and could only assume that this is what Jack believed a female P.I. should be wearing, if there even was such a thing back in 1946.

“Your partner?” Lubrano snorted derisively. “She’s a dame.”

Jack’s lips tilted in a half-smile. “Ain’t she though.”

Lubrano’s gaze turned nasty, lewd. Slowly, he raked me from head to foot. “Tell you what, dick. Why don’t you take a hike and leave the broad. She and I can, uh . . . talk. And when I’m through giving her what she wants, I’ll lay odds she never goes back to you.”

Because I blinked just then, I failed to see exactly which of Jack’s army jujitsu moves he’d used to render Joey Lubrano helpless. I simply sensed a flurry of movement as Jack exploded from his chair, heard a surprised grunt from Lubrano, then opened my blinking eyes to gawk at the end result—Joey Lubrano’s profile kissing the floor, his arms bent back in what had to be a painful position.

“Don’t disrespect my partner, Lubrano. It makes me mad.”

“Ow! Get off me, dick!”

Jack tightened his grip on the young man’s arms. He wailed in pain.

“All right, all right,” he moaned. “What do you want?”

“First . . . apologize to the lady,” said Jack. And when Lubrano hesitated, he tightened his grip once more.

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I’m sorry!”

Jack loosened his grip, but only a fraction. “Good boy. Now listen to me and listen good. I’ve found incriminating evidence in your place—”

“What evidence?” spat Lubrano.

“A box of photos. Photos of a naked woman in lewd poses. Photos of a woman that Emily Stendall claims you blackmailed for money and then murdered. Now, after I found those photos, I could have slipped out of here and gone to my client with them—and we both could have gone to the police just like she wanted. But I took a very close look at them, and I’m guessing you have something to tell me, don’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Lubrano.

“Fine, then I’ll haul you out of here and we’ll talk it over at the nearest precinct—the one that apparently missed these photos on their first search of your place. How about that?”

“No! I don’t want to do that,” said Lubrano. “Look, this is all wrong . . . you need to know the whole story.”

“Good. And you need to know that after I let you go, I’ll be covering you with my rod, so don’t try any funny stuff or I’ll pump you so full of lead the Parks Department will designate you a metal sculpture. Got it?”

Lubrano quickly nodded.

“Okay, nice and slow,” said Jack, smoothly releasing Joey while simultaneously reaching for the gun in his shoulder holster.

“Jack,” I whispered after Joey rose and Jack had waved him over to the lumpy sofa. “Why didn’t the police find the photos the first time?”

“Baby, didn’t you learn anything back at the Comfy-Time Motel? Badges don’t always find everything they should—especially when they’re not motivated to look very hard. Joey here kept this shoebox under a loose board beneath a throw rug in his bedroom. A good trick, but not an original one.”

Joey sat down heavily on the old sofa, rubbing his bruised wrists.

“Okay,” said Jack. “Let’s take it from the top.”

Joey spilled it all. How Emily Stendall had been the one with whom he’d been carrying on an affair. How she’d come up with a plan to extort a great deal of money from her sister, Sarah Nolan. The two women looked a lot alike—they were both about the same height and weight, both had delicate features and pale skin. The biggest difference was that Emily’s hair was blonde and Sarah’s was jet black.

So one weekend when the Nolans were away, Emily concocted a story for Benny, the routinely half-inebriated doorman, convincing him that the Nolans had left her a key to water her plants, but she’d lost it.

Once inside, Emily shooed Benny away and slipped Joey in. Lubrano took a series of racy photos of Emily— while she was wearing a black wig styled exactly like Sarah’s hair. The shots were out of focus on the face, but clearly showed that the photos had been of a dark-haired woman of Sarah’s build, in Sarah’s bedroom, wearing Sarah’s jewelry, and stripping out of her private clothes and under-things.

Then, one night, while Sarah’s husband was away on one of his long business trips, Joey charmed his way into Sarah’s apartment and actually did sleep with her.

“It was Emily’s idea that I sleep with Mrs. Nolan,” confessed Lubrano. “She said Mrs. Nolan would feel guilty about it afterward. Then that would give us leverage. She’d be more inclined to pay up because she’d know she wouldn’t be able to lie to her husband and claim she’d never slept with me—when she had.”

Joey showed up with the photos the next night, demanding a cool two hundred fifty thousand, which would clean out Mrs. Nolan’s trust fund. Sarah Nolan broke down and agreed to get the money if he’d just give up the photos and negatives.

“We arranged a night for me to come to her apartment and make the trade,” Lubrano explained. “Then Emily and I were supposed to beat it out of town for Miami. That was our plan all along. The money would let us get